


Icebreakers

by lazulisong



Category: Cardcaptor Sakura
Genre: F/M, Gen, oh god you guys what, old shit ported over for posterity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:00:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/pseuds/lazulisong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Eriol and Tomoyo kind of fall in love, but kind of don't, and families are super important even when you want to kill them all.</p><p>Due to what appears to be legitimate repeated public demand (by that I mean please blame Tay and Tari) I finally got around to uploading my first long fic to AO3, for your downloading ease. </p><p>It was written in 2000. Please treat it kindly.</p><p>Icebreakers was my giant ExT shipping manifesto. That's pretty much all you need to know about this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Icebreakers

**Author's Note:**

> ERIOL'S CANON LOVE INTEREST WAS BULLSHIT, AND TOMOYO DESERVED MORE THAN LOVING SOMEONE FROM AFAR ALSO I WAS TWENTY YEARS OLD AND EXTREMELY DEPRESSED AND TRYING TO DISTRACT MYSELF FROM THE CHORUS OF "DOWN THE ROAD, NOT ACROSS THE STREET" PLAYING ON LOOP IN MY HEAD: APPARENTLY IT BECAME A FANDOM CLASSIC AND I AM TERRIFIED OF YOU GUYS, A LOVE STORY.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I made many bad decisions when I was nineteen.

Kinomoto Sakura was having a tantrum. It was a very small tantrum, and it was being conducted in the privacy of her best friend's room, but still, Kinomoto Sakura was having a screaming, kicking tantrum.

Which, of course, her best friend was filming. Tomoyo never had given up her old habit of following Sakura around with a V8, and it had only been strengthened by the excuse of filming everything to send to Li-kun while he was in Hong Kong.

"And then," shrieked Sakura, hopping up and down in sheer rage. "And then! Oniichan took ONE LOOK at Syaoran kissing me -- on the CHEEK! -- and let go of the Dobermans. And for all Syaoran and I knew, they could have been junkyard killers!"

"Were they?" asked Tomoyo.

"Nooo," admitted Sakura, "At least, they only jumped on Syaoran and tried to lick him to death, but still! All I could do is stand there and SCREAM as my BROTHER let loose DANGEROUS ANIMALS at my BOYFRIEND and then Kero and Daddy rushed out, sure that I was being MURDERED and now if Kero even SEES Syaoran he starts BARKING, and even DADDY thought it was funny! DADDY!"

Tomoyo tsked disapprovingly.

"And to top it all off," said Sakura, bitterly, "I asked Yukito-san if he didn't think he could talk to Oniichan, and Yukito-san said I just needed to give Oniichan time. TIME~! As if I haven't been trying to get them to at least make a truce for THREE years! I've tried everything! I've discussed, I've pleaded, I've been reasonable! And they BOTH say it's the other's fault!"

Tomoyo shook her head. "How terrible," she said sympathetically.

Sakura hopped up and down again, and said a few choice words learnt from Kero, Syaoran and Touya when they hadn't thought she was listening. "AAAARRRRRRGH! I'm SO fustrated, Tomoyo-chan! I even asked ERIOL-KUN, and HE said he'd never known a Li to make peace with someone before they were good and ready, and when I asked when 'good and ready' was, he flapped his hands like wings and started oinking!" She flung herself on Tomoyo's bed and buried her face in the pillows.

"Poor Sakura-chan," said Tomoyo, putting aside the camera to sit on the bed and pat Sakura's head.

"I am surrounded," said a tragic and muffled voice from the middle of the pillows,"By idiot males."

Tomoyo stroked her hair. "It must be terrible to be surrounded by tetosterome all the time," she agreed.

"What am I going to dooooooooooooooo, Tomoyo-chan?"

Tomoyo patted her head. "First off, you're going to let me brush your hair so you don't have a headache anymore. Then you're going to spend the night tonight, and we'll decide what to do."

Sakura looked up from the pillows. "How did you know I had a headache, Tomoyo-chan?"

Tomoyo smiled. "Because it's you," she said. "Besides, dealing with males would give anybody a headache."

"Don't remind me," Sakura said.

\------------------------------------

In the end, it was Sonomi who came up with the plan. She hadn't originally planned to be home for dinner, but of course when she heard that Sakura was spending the night, she raced home and prepared to spend the night basking in the presence of Nadesiko's daughter. She was properly horrified by the tale of Syaoran and Touya's stubborness, and the callous reactions of the other males in Sakura's life, and Sakura suddenly realised again how much she missed her mother. Surely Nadesiko would have thought of something, and even if she hadn't, the very presence of someone who UNDERSTOOD those things would have been a comfort.

"I don't suppose," said Sonomi, "that you could ignore them until they made it up? Since they don't get along, just deprive them of your presence until they do?"

"I-i-ignore Syaoran AND Oniichan?" said Sakura, horrified. It wasn't that she and Syaoran were attached at the hip, it was just that at school they were commonly known as Kinomotosanandlikun. They had been seperated for so long that even not seeing each other for a day made them restless until they saw each other again. The thought of **deliberately** ignoring Syaoran was just... well, Sakura couldn't even imagine it. "Oh, no, I couldn't!"

"Hmm..." said Sonomi, tapping her fingers against the table. "Nadesiko couldn't do things like that, either."

"And what makes it worse," wailed Sakura, "Is that if they would just give each other a CHANCE, they'd get along perfectly! They both play soccer, they both have black belts --"

"-- not that that's any comfort, I'm sure," said Sonomi, wryly.

"--they both like to cook, they both --" Sakura paused for breath and inspiration.

"--love Sakura-chan very much--" offered Tomoyo.

"And they're both," snarled Sakura, "As stubborn as pigs!"

"Why don't they get along in the first place?" asked Sonomi.

Sakura coughed. "Well...they kind of started off...on the wrong foot..."

Sonomi raised an inquiring brow. Sakura sighed. "Well, you see... Syaoran didn't like me much when we first met, and so he was being a little... and Oniichan saw and got a little upset."

Sonomi gave her a look that said she knew there was more to the story, and she wasn't going to pursue it. Tomoyo tilted her head. "And Hiiragizawa-kun couldn't offer any useful suggestions?"

Sakura shook her head. "He said usually if Clow had to deal with trying to change a Li's mind, he did it with a large brick." She stopped and a vaguely troubled expression appeared on her face. "I think he was kidding. Do you think he was joking, Tomoyo-chan?"

"Probably," said Tomoyo, soothingly. Sakura suddenly realised that Tomoyo-chan was showing a lot of her pretty, white, sharp teeth in the reassuring smile she gave her.

"Hmmm...." said Sonomi. "If only..." She looked up and snapped her fingers. "Christmas!"

"Christmas?"

\---------------

Syaoran, having satisfied himself that neither Touya with his Dobermans nor Tomoyo with her V8 were around [one time he went through his apartment and found five remote cameras, strategically placed -- although that could have been Hiiragizawa being Funny again], prepared to spend the next hour engaged in his favorite activity -- sitting on the couch with Sakura curled in his arms. "Sitting" was probably the wrong word. Generally they ended up draped over each other and the couch in a way that would make Touya hire a pack of man-eating tigers.

Between Tomoyo's V8 [he would never, ever, forget the day he walked into the AV room at school and saw himself kissing Sakura on the screen -- his forehead was still scarred from the fall he took], Touya and the Dobermans, and, what he actually hated more, Hiiragizawa and his sardonic renditions of old Chinese love songs [Syaoran had a classical Chinese education, but Hiiragizawa had several decades headstart, Clow's education, and nobody to dropkick him for learning the dirty ones. His recond was three notes of a song that began by comparing someone's skin to cherry petals and went on from there, before Syaoran caught the reference, turned a brilliant shade of scarlet, AND had to recite the poem to Sakura and Tomoyo. Hiiragizawa, of course, was out of reach in a tree and laughing his damn head off], it seemed like he hardly ever got a moment alone with Sakura.

He shifted Sakura more comfortably in his arms and dropped a kiss on the top of her forehead. Their homework was done, and Syaoran was looking forward to the next hour, especially since he'd spent the last one explaining math to Sakura. Not that he minded, of course, but Sakura still regarded math as a special horror sent to torment her, and since Syaoran was in the Special Advanced Son, If You Don't Go Into Engineering, I'm Going to SHOOT You Class, he ended up helping her.

"December already," he said.

"Mm," said Sakura, cuddling closer.

That should have been his first clue.

"What do you want for Christmas?" he asked. He'd already had his mother send out a little jade cherry tree. She hadn't been happy about it, but Syaoran pointed out that a) it was something for the Clan Head's wife, b) the Clan Head was Syaoran, c) he was going to be with Sakura for the next several lifetimes, if he had anything to say about it, and d) Sakura was more powerful than Clow Read. Whereupon his mother had sighed heavily and sent it. He was still planning to get something special for her and hadn't quite decided what.

Sakura stilled and looked up at him through her lashes.

That should have been his second clue.

"Well...." said Sakura, slowly.

Syaoran smiled down at her and kissed her again. "What do you want?" he asked against her lips. "You know I'd get anything for you."

"Anything?" asked Sakura, twining her arms around his neck with a kittenish snuggle.

That should have been his third clue.

"Any-thing-at-all," he promised, puncuating the words with kisses. He was pleasantly aware of Sakura's scent and the way it mixed with his own. Maybe he'd get her some cherry blossom perfume.

Sakura pulled her head back and smiled brilliantly at him. That should have been his fourth clue, but unfortunately, he was too dazzled to notice.

"I don't care what you get me," she said, snuggling her head into the side of his neck, "As long as you go shopping for it with Oniichan."

It took Syaoran a second to process this.

"WHHAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTT?!"

\-------------------------

Half an hour later, he was still trying to convince Sakura that it was the _dumbest_ idea he'd ever heard of -- except, possibly, leaving Kero and Spinel to guard a sweets shop and dumping a bag of powdered sugar over Spinel before you left. [Which, not to mention any names, Hiiragizawa had done. Just to see what would happen, he claimed.]

"But Sakura," he nearly whined, "We'll kill each other before we get outside of the house!"

"Eriol-kun volunteered to chaperon," said Sakura. "Because Tomoyo-chan said if I went along you wouldn't have a chance to discuss anything, and besides, I didn't need to go along on a shopping trip to get my own present."

That was a big fat comfort. The thought of having Hiiragizawa and his ... remarks ... along for the ride while he tried to find something for Sakura gave him the cold shivers.

Something struck him. "Hiiragizawa 'volunteered'?"

Sakura shrugged from where she sat on the floor -- Syaoran was pacing -- and said, "Tomoyo-chan talked to him. I don't know the details."

Considering that Daidoujiwas the only who could even make an attempt at controlling Hiiragizawa, and it generally involved bribery, blackmail, or worse, Syaoran was sure Sakura would never know them. Syaoran had seen Daidouji "talk" Hiiragizawa into something once. He usually remembered it at three am, and woke with the heebie-jeebies. Daidouji said that she and Hiiragizawa "understood" each other. If that was "understanding", Syaoran, for one, was perfectly happy to be in the dark.

"And have you asked your brother about this?" Syaoran hoped against hope that she had, and Touya had turned her down flat.

"Well, Yukito-san was there, and he kind of stared at Oniichan and Oniichan caught himself in the middle of saying something about snowballs and said he'd think about it if you agreed."

Damn. That made HIM responsible. "Sakura -- "

Sakura looked up into his face. "You're going to refuse?"

"Well --" he began, and froze. That sounded like a snuffle, and Sakura never cried to get her way. It _was_ a snuffle. "Sakura --"

She snuffled again. "Two of the three men I love the most don't get along, and it's just because they're being stubborn, and I just want you two to give each other a _chance_, and -- and --"

"Sweetheart, don't cry," he begged, swamped with guilt. He knelt beside her. "It's just that --"

Sakura snuffled again, and he was lost. "All right," he sighed.

Sakura brightened. "You will?"

He nodded. "But I'm not promising anything, ok? I'll go shopping with your brother, but don't expect anything else."

Sakura flung herself into his arms, and they went crashing to the floor. "Just as long as you go!"

Syaoran hugged her. "Just one question," he said.

"Hmm?"

"Who's the third man you love so much?"

Sakura banged his head affectionately against the floor. "My father, you dimwit!"

\-------------------------------

Touya was not so easily convinced. Fujitaka wondered once again where his son had gotten his incredible stubborness -- but on the other hand, Nakdesiko-san was sweet and gentle and yielded like a reed in a windstorm, but she got what she wanted when she wanted it, and Fujitaka, for one, was still not quite sure how she had bulldozed his objections to their marriage. He vaguely remembered something about how she loved him and he loved her and how she wanted to be with him forever, but after that it was a bit of a blur. For instance, he was pretty sure she hadn't actually marched him to the register office, but then again...

Actually, Sakura-san was looking a great deal like Nadesiko-san, minus a bit of the fragile, reed-like air.

Well, all right, minus all of it. Nadesiko-san was not given to kicking people in the shins and screeching that they were Stubborn Idiot Brothers Who Wouldn't Even Give Syaoran-kun a CHANCE and she hoped that Akizuki-san broke his thick head the next time she glomped him. And who had driven her to the station to give Syaoran-kun his bear?

"That was different," said Touya-kun.

"Different HOW?" shrieked Sakura-san.

Touya-kun set his jaw.

"You know, To-ya," said Tsukishiro-kun, "She does have a point." His words and tone were mild, but Fujitaka reconised the look that he was giving Touya-kun. Nadesiko-san had only sent it at him once or twice, but Fujitaka still remembered it clearly. It suggested that his son had best change his ways in the next five seconds, or find himself on the couch with a sheet that night. Fujitaka had never inquired too deeply into Touya-kun and Tsukishiro-kun's relationship. He'd decided a long time ago that firstly, Tsukishiro-kun was a very nice boy, secondly, that the good Lord only knew Fujitaka was the last one on earth to complain about a non-traditional relationship, and thirdly, he bet he could talk that nice Li-kun into letting one of their sons take the Kinomoto name.

Touya-kun looked at Tsukishiro-kun and Sakura-san, and his brow set harder.

"Woss going on?" demanded a sleepy voice from the door. "I was asleep and then Sakura got noisy."

"_I_ was being noisy?" screeched Sakura-san.

"Well," said Fujitaka, mildly, "You are being a little loud."

"Yes, Daddy," murmured Sakura-san. She glared at her brother again. "And even if I was being a _little_ loud, it's all Oniichan's fault!"

Kero-kun blinked. [Fujitaka agreed with his daughter that "Cerberus-san" was a bit of a mouthful for someone who might be convienently carried in a handbag, but he couldn't quite bring himself to call him "Kero-chan", either.] "What this time?"

"I just want him to give Syaoran a _chance_ and he's being stubborn!" Sakura-san glared at Touya-kun again.

Touya-kun choked. "I'm NOT spending a day in That Brat's company!"

Kero-kun looked from Sakura-san to Touya-kun again, obviously confused. "The Kid Priest?" He flew over to Sakura and landed lightly on her shoulder. "Niichan?"

Sakura-san took two or three deep breaths. "All I want for Christmas," she said, "Is for Syaoran-kun and Oniichan to go shopping for my present together. And I don't," she shrieked, "care if they bought me a roll of TOILET PAPER, as long as they did it together! And Eriol-kun offered to chaperon --"

Fujitaka could have sworn that Kero-kun cringed.

"--and Syaoran-kun agreed and now only _Oniichan_ is being stubborn!" She stamped her foot in sheer rage.

Kero-kun blinked, and looked at Sakura-san. "You want I should work him over a little for you?"

A large bead of sweat traveled gently down Sakura-san's head. "Have you been watching gangster movies again?" Fujitaka glanced guiltily over at the PlayStation and the new Al Capone 1930 game. He and Kero-kun had almost beaten it.

Kero-kun grinned evilly, and flew toward Touya-kun. He transformed and smiled wistfully at Touya-kun, making sure most of his teeth were bared. "I'm sure I could convince him, Sakura."

Fujitaka prudently retired to the corner of the room.

"Kero-chan, if you dare --" began Sakura-san, just as Tsukishiro-kun transformed, too.

"Cerberus, that's the Mistress's BROTHER!" he bellowed. "What the hell --"

Fujitaka sighed heavily and went to make tea and cookies. This was going to take a while. He closed the door to the living room, but the sounds of the discussion were still perfectly audible, and Fujitaka shook his head.

::He knows he's going to give in eventually,:: said Nadesiko-san, materialising beside him. He reached up and touched her cheek.

"I'm sure he does," said Fujitaka. "But he really dislikes Li-kun, and Li-kun really dislikes him."

Nadesiko-san trailed him into the kitchen and perched herself lightly on the back of a chair. ::They both hold Sakura-san very dear,:: she said. ::So I'm sure they'll see reason.::

"Yes, but where did he get that incredible stubborness from?" Fujitaka was busy taking things out of the cubboard, so he must have imagined Nadesiko-san making a strange noise like :: **coff** (myfamily) **coff** ::. When he turned and raised an inquiring eyebrow at her, she just smiled at him.

::My family has always had very strong wills,:: she said. ::Touya-san just needs to get his mind around the idea that he needs to share Sakura-san.::

"He's had six years," said Fujitaka, setting out mixing bowls. "More, come to think of it. You'd think he'd have gotten used to the idea."

And again, Nadesiko-san made a strange sound like :: **coff** (Sonomi-chan) **coff** ::

Fujitaka had to agree.

\---------------------------------

"Yah, awful worried about Nii-chan!" jeered the Large Version of The Plushie.

"You don't threaten the Mistress's BROTHER!" bellowed Yuki's other form.

"Sakura's mad at him herself," countered the Large Version of The Plushie.

Touya twitched. This was not a good day.

"Kero-chan! Yue-san!"

They ignored her.

"Just like the time you --" began the Large Version of The Plushie. He'd already dragged up incidents from the last three hundred years and was still digging for more. Some of them were things that even Yuki's other form had apparently forgotten, but he certainly didn't seem to have any problems with dragging up others in answer. Touya began to think that they had spent the last millenium doing nothing but having fights.

"You two return to your false forms THIS INSTANT," said Sakura, in tones of instant obedience or death. Somewhat to Touya's surprise, they obeyed her.

Yuki blinked vaguely for a second. "I wish he'd give me warning."

"Blame Clow," said The Plushie. "That always works for me."

Yuki pulled a face. "Did I miss anything important?"

"Not really," said Touya. This was a mistake. Sakura turned a poisonous look in his direction.

"WHY are you being so stubborn?" she demanded.

"Because --" Touya began, and stopped. There were perfectly good reasons for the way he treated That Brat, and how That Brat treated him, but he couldn't explain them to Sakura. "It's -- it's a guy thing, ok?"

Yuki looked up at the ceiling and said to it, "I guess it's his sister complex again, yes?"

Touya glared at him.

"Ah," said Yuki, smirking at the ceiling, "He can't answer. It can't be helped if he's so unwilling to admit that his precious baby sister's grown up, can it?"

The Plushie _snirked_. That was the only word for it. Touya yearned to grab it by its little cotton-ball tipped tail and swing it around until it was so dizzy it couldn't see straight.

"And Li-kun, too, doesn't like Sakura-chan's older brother." Yuki shook his head sadly. "You may just have to let them have one good fight, Sakura-chan. Maybe if they beat the daylights out of each other, they'd settle their differences." He paused, as if struck by a thought. "But Sakura-chan loves them both so much, she'd be really upset if they had a fight about her, right? She might cry or refuse to speak to them ever again, and I, for one, wouldn't blame her a bit."

The Plushie crossed its little arms and nodded, sighing heavily.

"Some people," said Yuki to the ceiling, "Might consider that their little sister might be feeling bad, because she thinks that her brother and the boy she loves so much hate each other because of her. And maybe she's thinking that if it wasn't for her, they might be friends, because they have so much in common. Like soccer and martial arts and science, and the fact that they both love Sakura-chan very much." He stopped again. "And the fact that they both want to drop Hiiragiwaza-kun off a sharp cliff and back several truckloads of rocks after him," he added, thoughtfully.

"I wouldn't do that to Hiiragiwaza," said Touya, stung. Yuki just looked at him. "I'd much rather slow-roast him over a bed of hot coals." He looked over at Sakura, and saw the hopeless, pleading look on her face, and was lost.

"Please, Oniichan?" she said. "Just a chance?"

Touya sighed. "Fine," he said. "I'll do it."

Sakura cheered. Yuki gave him a smug smile and said, "I knew you were a nice brother."

"Shut the hell up." But there was no heat in the words.

\------------------------------------

Tomoyo found Eriol at school the next day -- just in time to relieve him of something obviously meant for poor Syaoran's locker -- and announced, "Sakura-chan talked them into it."

Eriol made a half-hearted grab at his toy -- a motion-activated plushie set to recite a particularly interesting bit of Chinese poetry when Xiao Lang opened his locker -- but didn't put much effort into it. "I'm impressed by Sakura-san again," he said, radiating innocence, light, and an aura of How Mean of You To Take My Very Last Toy To Play With My Cute Relative, Tomoyo-saaaaan. "How did she do it?"

Tomoyo-san opened up the back of the plushie and removed the voice-chip -- and, Eriol was sorry to see, the false back that hid his special improvements. "She talked to Li-kun, and then she said that Tsukishiro-san made her brother think things over."

Eriol just bet "Yukito" had. He smiled brilliantly at Tomoyo-san. "So I'm to play chaperon?" Already he has serveral plots hatching -- among them, the fact that a Victoria's Secret had just opened. He was looking forward to Xiao Lang's reaction. Of course, he thought, awash in a a warm glow of virtue, they often had cute clothes there, too. It was just too bad they'd have to go there with Sakura-san's brother.

Tomoyo-san smiled sweetly at him and tossed his toy in the trash. She then produced a half-inch thick sheaf of paper from her bag. "And here," she cooed, "Is a list of things that I'm quite sure Hiiragiwaza-kun would never _dream_ of doing while he was chaperoning. And Spinel-san has already agreed to sit on your head while you read them, and sign every page after you're done." She placed it in his hands.

Eriol reflected, not for the first time, that Tomoyo-san had no sense of humor about some things.

"And now," she said, with quite a few of her pretty white teeth showing in her smile, "You're going to give me the REST of your toys, aren't you?"

Eriol gave her a look of offended and saddened innocence. "What toys?"

Tomoyo-san merely held out her hand. He tried to outstare her. It didn't work. He sighed, pouted cutely and emptied his pockets. "I guess I would have to get up early in the morning to outsmart Tomoyo-san."

Tomoyo's smile was like the baring of fangs. "You'd have to stay up all night."

\------------------------------------

"Is that the list from Tomoyo?" asked Spinel.

Eriol nodded. "She seemed to think I was going to _pull_ something," he said, contriving to looked shocked and saddened by Tomoyo-san's cruel lack of trust.

Spinel was heard to mutter something about Eriol having met his match, and about bloody time. Eriol chose to ignore him. He arranged himself on the Throne Of Evil -- named by Nakuru, of course -- and began to read.

There was a silence. Spinel waited.

The silence extended.

Spinel had nearly decided to go find somewhere safe -- like under a storage chest in the attic at Read Manor back in England -- when Eriol said, "Spinel, would you get me the cordless, if you please?"

Spinel relaxed a little, and and got the phone. Eriol dialed Tomoyo's number without even looking at the keypad. "Daidouji residence? This is Hiiragizawa. May I speak to Tomoyo-san?"

A pause while Tomoyo was found, evidentally. Spinel landed on the back of the chair and waited.

"Miss Tomoyo?"

This was a good sign. Eriol's pet name for Tomoyo, if it could be called that, was Miss Tomoyo, and he only called her that when he was in a certain mood. Eriol used a lot of pet names, although sometimes Spinel thought that he was the only one who was aware of it. But that was what he had been created for, to know Eriol better than Eriol did himself. Nakuru was a companion, but Spinel had been created to understand him.

"Is there anything I am allowed to do while chaperoning?" asked Eriol, leaning back in the Throne of Evil. "No lingerie boutiques, no Chinese poetry at my cute relative, no rabbit puns, no murmured remarks..." A pause. "I'm allowed to behave myself and see that Xiao Lang and Sakura-san's brother behave themselves, don't kill each other and form a truce. I see."

Another pause, in which Spinel could vaguely hear Tomoyo explaining that this call had best not be a prelude to Eriol trying to wiggle out of behaving.

"You wound me," said Eriol. "When do I ever, er, 'try to wiggle out of behaving', Miss Tomoyo?" Another pause. "Oh, come, now, I only tried that once."

A long pause.

"That was different," said Eriol, piously. Spinel shook his head. "Miss Tomoyo, how am I to get them to form a truce if I'm allowed to do nothing to but follow them around with a smile on my face?"

Another pause.

"Smiling makes Xiao Lang nervous. I see. Why don't you go with them, then?"

A perfectly audible sigh from the phone, and another long explanation.

"You have to hold Sakura-san's hand while she waits to see if Xiao Lang and her brother come back in a hearse. I see."

Eriol held the phone from his ear while Tomoyo said, "AND DON'T MAKE JOKES LIKE THAT, HIIRAGIZAWA-KUN."

"I beg your pardon," he said, soothingly. "But, Miss Tomoyo, have you ever read The Art of War?"

The phone radiated skepticism.

"Of course you have. Has Cerberus ever told you about the time that Clow spent fifty years researching the Li clan?" Whatever Tomoyo said made Eriol cringe. "I see he still remembers it. But, Miss Tomoyo, if you really want to have Xiao Lang and Sakura-san's brother make peace --"

Tomoyo interrupted him.

"I know it's important to Sakura-san. I know, if she wants it, you want it even more. But, Miss Tomoyo --" Another remark that made Eriol wince. Probably, Spinel deduced, something about how Sakura's happiness was the most important thing in the world. Spinel reminded himself to bring up Tomoyo some time. Eriol was acting a little funny about her. "Miss Tomoyo, do you ever think about yourself?" A pause. "I see. If Sakura-san is happy, you're happy."

Definitely, Spinel was going to have a talk with Eriol about Tomoyo. Soon.

"Listen to me, Miss Tomoyo. Xiao Lang's a bit different from the rest of his clan, but still --" Yet another interruption. "I know that. Listen. He's got so in the habit of disliking Sakura-san's brother, and Sakura-san's brother has got so in the habit of disliking him, just spending a day with each other isn't going to make much of a difference."

Spinel clearly heard Tomoyo snarl, "They'd best make an effort for Sakura-chan!"

"I'm sure they will," said Eriol. "Just out of idle curiousity, what will happen if I, er, 'don't behave'?"

Threat radiated from the phone.

"Will you handcuff me to you to make sure I don't do it again?" asked Eriol, hopefully. "Or will it be something with red ribbons? That would be fun," he said, wistfully. A biting pause. "Yes, Miss Tomoyo, I shall cease being ridiculous." Another acid pause. "Yes, I'm quite clear of what is allowed." Threat radiated from the phone. "I promise," said Eriol, "that I will do my utmost to help them form a truce without blood shed by either party."

A suspicious pause.

"Miss Tomoyo!" said Eriol, more in sorrow than in anger, "To think such a thing!"

Eriol held the phone from his ear as Tomoyo explained she had reason.

"Yes, Miss Tomoyo," he sighed. "Anyway, I wanted to ask you. What do you want for Christmas?"

"..." said the phone, audibly.

"Now, Miss Tomoyo, if I'm going on a shopping trip, shouldn't I shop?"

Another pause.

"Imagine what Xiao Lang would do to me if I tried to get Sakura-san something, Miss Tomoyo."

"..." said the phone.

"And I can't go shopping for Nakuru and Spinel, because I'd have to bring a wheelbarrow for Nakuru's." This was perfectly true. Nakuru handed Eriol a ream of paper printed on both sides of what she wanted every October -- her theory being that more was more and Eriol needed to get out of the goddamn house, anyway. Spinel traditionally recieved a jar of dilly beans and a book for Christmas.

"Of course," continued Eriol, dripping sweetness, light, and an aura of Don't Take Me Seriously Because I'm Being A Smartass Again Ha Ha Ha, which meant he was deadly serious and didn't want her to know it, "I could simply get you something I thought you'd like."

"Like a ring?" murmured Spinel. Eriol batted at him.

"Oh, no," he said to the phone. "Just Spinel. Now, what could I get you?"

Tomoyo apparently decided to play along on the grounds that it might help Sakura's goal.

"A box of chocolates? Really, Miss Tomoyo, no blades of grass from Read Manor? No Apples of Life?" Another pause. "Oh, am I being ridiculous again? Please excuse me. Tommorow, then? Good night." He hung up.

Spinel cleared his throat. "Do we have that little chat about Tomoyo now, or after you spend five hours tearing Tomoeda apart for something she will politely thank you for?"

Eriol pulled a face. "Was I being obvious?"

Spinel shrugged. "Even the wise Tomoyo may ignore things, if they upset her vison of the way the world should be."

Eriol pulled a worse face. "Well, anyway, I can do my my best to help Xiao Lang and Sakura-san's brother decide to form a truce." He smiled suddenly. "Even if Miss Tomoyo disapproves of my methods."

Spinel sighed heavily. "And afterwards manfully accept your punishment?"

"How well you know me, Spinel Sun."

\--------------------------------------------------------

"Eriol-kun..."

Eriol looked up from his papers -- not schoolwork [Eriol breezed through THAT in about thirty seconds], but some research for Fujitaka -- to see Sakura-san standing before him, with a worried look in her green eyes. Eriol laid his papers aside. "Sakura-san."

She still stood in front of him, her brows furrowed. Eriol lifted an eyebrow and silently patted the seat next to him. She sat, but still her face was troubled. Eriol waited patiently.

"Eriol-kun...." she said again, finally, "Do you think it's going to really work?"

Eriol supressed a smile and presented a grave and concerned face to Sakura-san. "The shopping trip?"

Sakura-san nodded. "It seemed like a good idea when Tomoyo-chan's mother suggested it, but now I don't know..." She bit her lip. "And I really do want them to get along, and I don't know how..."

Eriol was once again aware of the warm and pleasant feeling that Sakura-san brought with her. He liked her brother and Yukito. He was fond of Xiao Lang, and he cared for Spinel, Cerberus, Nakuru and Yue. But Sakura-san was Clow's daughter-of-the-next-life, the one who had filled his heart when he had been so lonely. He hated seeing her worried. An unhappy Sakura-san seemed to go against nature.

"Sakura-san," he said, "Your brother and Xiao Lang both love you very much, yes?"

"If they both love me," said Sakura-san, cutting straight to the point of the matter, "Why don't they get along? Yukito-san and I both love Oniichan and WE get along."

Eriol unhitched his brain and tried to think of something a female would understand. He could try to explain the elaborate underpinnings of territoriality, rank and hormones to Sakura-san, but somehow he had the feeling that she would declare them 'silly'. Not that he blamed her, he supposed; looked at rationally they did seem a little... primitive. "Your brother," he said carefully, "is used to thinking of you as his exclusively to watch over and protect. And when Xiao Lang first met you, what happened?"

"He tried to make me give up the Cards." Sakura-san's brows furrowed in thought. "But Oniichan got _worse_ after Syaoran-kun and I became friends."

"That's because he saw that Xiao Lang wanted you." Eriol hoped against hope that Sakura-san would leave it there.

Wheels turned, visibly, in Sakura-san's head. She wasn't dumb, thought Eriol, but her brother and father and Tomoyo-san all guarded her like a bunch of dragons did a precious jewel, and Syaoran, if possible, was even worse. So sometimes she didn't have the worldly understanding to think something through, and she was so modest that it never occured to her that she was a reason to fight over. But then again, Eriol had seen her come to a sudden, apparently unsupported conclusion that was nonetheless absolutely correct.

"So Oniichan and Syaoran-kun don't get along because they both want me for themselves?"

Eriol coughed. "Perhaps not quite so bluntly, Sakura-san."

"And part of it is because they've always done it?"

Eriol nodded. Sakura-san crossed her mouth in thought. He opened up a can of tea and offered it to her, and she took a long drink.

Eriol, unfortunately, had just taken a drink of his own tea, when Sakura-san paused, looked at him with an enlightened expression, and said, "You must be doing this because you like Tomoyo-chan a lot."

The tea went flying from his hand, and from his mouth, and, Lord help him, his nose. He coughed and gagged while Sakura-san anxiously pounded his back and went for paper towels. "What," he gasped finally, "In the seven holy names of God, brought THAT on?"

Sakura-san blinked puzzledly at him. "Well, I just got to thinking, that I wondered why Eriol-kun had agreed to spend the whole day with Syaoran-kun and Oniichan, because they don't like him much, and then I realised that Tomoyo-chan had been the one to ask you for me, and I got to thinking about that and I realised that you were always doing things for her and you watch her a lot. So I wondered if you liked Tomoyo-chan."

Eriol dropped his head in his hands and moaned. Then he called on all the saints of Clow's Catholic education to have mercy on him.

"Eriol-kun?"

"If the innocent Sakura-san noticed," said Eriol, "I must be obvious."

"Hoe?" Sakura-san was patentedly confused. "I just thought you must like her because you always do things for her. And you watch her a lot and you let her tell you to do things. And you don't let anyone else tell you to do things except for Akizuki-san, and you like her too. But you don't watch Akizuki-san the way you watch Tomoyo-chan." Her eyes widened. "Eriol-kun, your poor head!"

Eriol stopped beating himself with his notebook. "Sakura-san... Tomoyo has someone she likes, doesn't she?"

Sakura-san nodded. "But she told me that that person doesn't like her back."

Eriol marveled, once again, at how much Sakura-san was able to ignore if she wanted to. "So, if I DID like Tomoyo-san, it wouldn't do me very much good, would it?"

Sakura-san tilted her head. "But it might do Tomoyo-chan some good. She says she's liked this person for a very long time, and they have someone else they like. But since they're happy, so is she. And I thought, that was nice for the person she likes, but it must be a little lonely for Tomoyo-chan."

Eriol gaped at her. Sakura-san didn't manage to surprise him very often, but when she did... "But Tomoyo-san would be upset if she thought I liked her, right? Because she couldn't return my feelings without being disloyal to the one she loves."

Sakura-san crossed her mouth again. "I think...if I were the person she liked, it would make me really happy to know she has someone who likes her back. Even happier than I was now. Because if she had someone she loved, and someone who loved her back, she wouldn't be lonely. Or just watching on the outside of someone's happiness. She'd have her own happiness, and I'd be really happy, because I wouldn't feel like her liking me was going to take away all the nice things about liking someone and being liked back." She hesitated. "And I don't think she wants the person she likes to know that she likes them, because they have someone else, and she doesn't think they'd be happy if they knew. And it just seems...it seems like a sad sort of happiness to me." She shrugged. "So I'd wish she'd be happy with someone that likes her the best. Instead of her settling for second place."

Eriol stared at her while a million thoughts went colliding through his mind. Sakura-san did that to him. Finally, he said, smiling at her, "I'm sure the one that Tomoyo-san loves feels the same way that you do."

\---------------------------------------------------------

It had been decided that they would meet, as Eriol said, on "neutral territory", because if Syaoran went to the Kinomoto house, Touya would be at an advantage, and if they met at Syaoran's apartment, _he_ would have the advantage.

Nobody dreamed of suggesting Eriol's house, of course. Things were too unsettled, Syaoran and Touya too edgy at the thought of the trip, to even consider the thought. Tomoyo was pretty sure that Touya would have refused point-blank if he thought he had to go to Hiiragizawa-kun's house -- for one thing, he still clung fast to his dislike of Akizuki-san.

So the three of them were to meet at a cafe downtown, and Akizuki-san and Spinel were to spend the day at the Kinomoto house making cookies. Tomoyo didn't tell Sakura-chan, of course, but she meant to go to Hiiragizawa-kun's house before he left to meet Li-kun and Touya, and have a little chat with him. It wasn't that she didn't trust him, exactly, it was that she had a healthy respect for his capacity for saying one thing, with sincere and angelic eyes, and meaning quite another thing, and she had an idea that he was planning Something. She didn't know what, of course. But she meant to try to nip it in the bud before it could come to fruit.

When Hiiragizawa-kun opened the door, his shirt was half undone and his hair was soaking wet.

"Did you just get out of the shower?" demanded Tomoyo, disapprovingly.

"No," said Hiiragizawa-kun, "Nakuru decided to have a water fight."

"In DECEMBER?"

"It was warm water," said Hiiragizawa-kun, as if that explained everything, buttoning his shirt, "And she was mainly trying to give Spinel a bath, but Spinel was asleep and by the time he woke up all the way the whole house was soaked. And I happened to be in the path of the bowl when he tried to bite her."

"Is this," said Tomoyo, delicately stepping around a puddle, "a common occurance?"

"More common in the summer. Spinel doesn't like baths, but Nakuru likes water, so she tries to make him like it, too." Hiiragizawa-kun pushed his heavy black hair away from his face. He wasn't wearing his glasses. It made him look...different. More grown up, and maybe more serious. "Nakuru," he shouted, "Tomoyo-san's here, and where's the towel and my glasses?"

"COMING!"

Hiiragizawa-kun shook his head. "I hope she doesn't break her neck sliding down that wet banister." He stared ruefully up at his dripping bangs. "Nakuru! Have pity on your poor, blinded master, if you please!"

"I AAAAAAAAAAAM~!"

Tomoyo offered him her hankerchief, and he refused it with a quick gesture. He didn't seem very blinded at all, as he looked at her again. Without his glasses, you were more aware of the strange lavender-grey of his eyes, and the way his black eyelashes -- surely too thick and long for a male -- fringed them. "I assume," he said politely, "You came over to read me a lecture?"

"Really, Hiiragizawa-kun," said Tomoyo, severely, "How rude." His hair was dripping down to his shirt and making it cling to his shoulders. Tomoyo suddenly realised that he was as broad-shouldered as Touya-san, and perhaps a bit taller. His hair was dripping down onto his shirt, and it made the fabric very slightly transparent.

Eriol swept her a mocking bow. "I beg your pardon," he said. He straightened and looked at her with a funny smile lurking in the corner of his mouth. Tomoyo wasn't quite sure what sort of smile it was. "But, Tomoyo-san, you don't need to worry."

Tomoyo found that she had backed up half a step without realising it. "With you, Hiiragizawa-kun, I always worry."

Eriol pouted cutely at her. "How cruel, Tomoyo-san." His face went suddenly serious again. "But you really don't need to worry." His eyes drew hers and she was vaguely aware of something odd in her chest. "Because I know how important it is to you."

Tomoyo distantly realised that his eyes were turning a deep, purple-black, and the thing in her chest was a butterfly, struggling to get out...

Something small and black zoomed into the room and zipped to a landing on Tomoyo's shoulder. She leaped, and realised that it was only Spinel, burrowing into her hair. "I'm going to Sakura's house with you," he announced, glaring suspiciously at Akizuki-san bouncing into the room. "Because YOU don't try to DROWN people in their SLEEP."

"I call that about mean, Suppi!" Akizuki-san draped the towel over Hiiragizawa-kun's head and put his glasses in his shirt pocket. "I only tried to hold you down because you kept trying to fly away!"

Spinel glared. "You get people WET and you try to DROWN them and I'm not going to go anywhere with you."

Akizuki-san hmphed. "Fine. Like I want your bad breath on my shoulder anyway."

"Spinel doesn't have bad breath," Tomoyo objected. She should know. Spinel was even worse than Kero-chan about suddenly alighting on Sakura-chan's or her shoulder whenever a chance presented itself.

"Suppi," said Akizuki-san gleefully, "Has _very_ bad breath."

"I do NOT!"

There was a muffled chuckle from beneath the towel on Hiiragizawa-kun's head. "Tomoyo-san has never seen Spinel or Cerberus attack, Nakuru."

"Attack?" said Tomoyo, completely confused. "What does that have to do with..."

Hiiragizawa-kun pulled the towel off his head, ran his fingers through it and put his glasses on. "Yue and Ruby Moon are in human form, right? So they attack with their hands. Yue uses diamond shards, and Ruby uses ruby shards. But Spinel and Cerberus don't have hands, so their attacks are with their breath. Cerberus breathes fire and Spinel Sun sends out a ruby light beam. That's why Nakuru says he has bad breath."

"But that would only be in his big form, right?" asked Tomoyo.

Hiiragizawa-kun shook his head. "Spinel can use his while he's small. Cerberus spent most of his time with Clow in his big form, so it wasn't a problem that he couldn't use it when he was small."

"Oh," said Tomoyo, doubtfully.

"Anyway," he said briskly, "We're going to be late." He made another sweeping bow -- Tomoyo reminded herself to find out sometime when, precisely, Clow had lived -- and offered her his arm. Tomoyo curtsied gravely and accepted it.

\---------------------------------------------------------

Eriol hummed a particularly happy, bloodyminded tune beneath his breath as he practically skipped toward Cafe Piffle Princess. Oh yes, he thought, gleefully, Xiao Lang and Sakura-san's brother would be gettting along by the time the day was done.

If only a truce to try to kill him. Eriol was comfortably aware of the fact that he had at last outsmarted Miss Tomoyo. Even she hadn't thought of _this_.

\----------------------------------------------------------

Touya and Hiiragizawa were waiting for him at the cafe. Syaoran made his way toward them. Hiiragizawa was oozing happy evil. Touya was glaring at Hiiragizawa and Syaoran alternately. Syaoran glared back. This occupied them for a full five minutes, until they became aware of Hiiragizawa's politely repressed maniac sniggering. They glared at him, and he pulled a blank and gently inquiring face.

"I ordered a mocha and some chocolate wafers for you," said Hiiragizawa, cheerfully. Too cheerfully. "Got to keep up your strength and all that, what?"

Something in the back of Syaoran's mind paused. Something about...

"And I thought," continued Hiiragizawa, with a bright idiot smile, "We could go to the shopping terrace, don't you know, and see what they have there, what?"

Syaoran and Touya stared at him. He smiled brightly back. Syaoran found himself scooting his chair toward Touya, led by the primal part of the brain that suggested that there was safety in numbers.

Eriol beamed happily on them. "I'm sure we're going to have such FUN today, what?"

The question, Syaoran thought, casually reaching into his pocket to be sure he had a good supply of ofuda, was 'fun for whom'?

\-----------------------------------------------------------

Nakuru bounced into the Kinomoto house. "Sakuraaa-chaaaaaaaaaan! Kinomoto-seeeennnnnseeeeeeeiii! Tsukishiro-kuuuuuuuuuuuun! Kerooooo-chaaaaaaaan! We brought Tomoyo-chaaaan with uuuuuuuuusssssssssss!" She hugged Sakura, wrung Fujitaka's hand, glomped Yukito until he turned blue and she has a good shot at Kero, whom she snatched out of the air -- a technique perfected on Spinel, of course -- and cuddled him briskly. Kero tried to bite her. She held him by the tail, cackled delightedly at him, and then let go. Kero called her something that earned him a Look from Sakura. "Snickerdoodles! Sugaaar coooooookies! Pound cake! Chocolate chip cooOOOOOookiiiiiiiiiiiies! Ladyfingers! Cover all the Oreos with cho~co~laaaaate~!" she sang, bouncing around the room. "Lots of good things to eat, yes! Make them for Touya-kun, make them for Eriol, make them for Tsukishiro-kun, Sakura-chan, Tomoyo-chan, Liiiiiii-kun, Fujitaka-sensei and meeeee! Hold Suppi down while Kero rams them down his throat, yes! Lots of sweets for me, me, ME~!"

Everyone stared at her.

"Chocolate-covered expresso beans," said Spinel direly, poking his head out from Tomoyo's hair. "Ze was pouring them down hir throat with a funnel."

"Such fun today, yes!" trilled Nakuru, happily.

Beads of sweat traveled down everybody but Spinel and Yukito's heads. Yukito gave Nakuru a big, fat smile. "I agree!"

Sakura hit the ground with a thud.

"Not," said Spinel, who seemed determined to emulate a famous gloomy donkey, "That they were created by the same freak, oh no."

\---------------------------------------------------------  
Eriol bounced happily ahead of Touya and Syaoran, wearing a maniac smile. "I hear Victoria's Secret is having a special Christmas sale, what! And Frederick's of Hollywood just opened a branch!"

Syaoran turned a shade of crimson previously unachieved by the human face. Touya glared poisonously at him and Eriol. "If you THINK," he said, with concentrated venom, "that we are stepping ONE INCH in such a store to shop for MY LITTLE SISTER --"

Eriol, perhaps wisely, did not make the obvious remark about Yukito.

Syaoran shook his head vigorously to clear it. "...jewelry store..." He managed. "... the Gap..not going to get her..." he couldn't finish the sentence and blushed even more scarlet.

"If we're going to The Gap," said Touya sarcastically, "Wouldn't it be nice if you knew her SIZE? Or what she likes?"

Syaoran recovered somewhat. "I do have four older sisters," he said, with dignity. "(And Meiling.) I guess I know SOMETHING about shopping for a girl. Clothing is easy."

"Is that a fact," said Touya, radiating disbelief. "And how do you do it?"

"Buy an 6 and keep the receipt," said Syaoran promptly. "And then when they yell that they're really a 12 and do you think you're FUNNY, swear to God they look like an 6 to you." He thought for a second. "Or you can get them some sort of cute mascot thing and claim it reminded you of them. But if you get Badtz-Maru you get beat up."

Touya's mouth twitched. "Tried it, did you."

"Only once," said Syaoran, rubbing his head as if at the memory of some painful noogie.

Eriol, listening, allowed himself a small, evil grin.

\---------------------------------------------------------

Fujitaka had gotten used to allowing for Tsukishiro-kun's appetite -- and also for Sakura-san's, who was generally a light eater but apt to take sudden fits where she poured food down her throat with a funnel, staggered upstairs, slept like the dead for fourteen hours, and crawled downstairs to eat half the pantry before collapsing on the couch, if she were lucky, or the floor, if she were not, especially when there had been a patch of particularly nasty weather and there hadn't been any stars for a while. Hiiragizawa-kun had gone into a long and complex explanation, stopped, looked at Sakura-san's blank face, and then said, "It's because you can't get any power from the stars, so you have to generate more for the Cards yourself." They'd gotten used to it, but all of them [except possibly Sakura herself] kept a sharp and anxious eye on the weather, and Syaoran, for one, had gained minor infamy and a fearsome lecture for bellowing, in the library, as he read the paper, "What the hell do you MEAN, rain at night for the next week? Goddammit, Sakura needs it to be CLEAR!"

It had taken a while to get used to shopping and mentally rewriting recipes for a daughter supporting nineteen Cards and two magic beings on her own power, plus one of said beings' tendency to suppliment that power with horrific quantities of food, and the other's tendency to oink hopefully when someone went into the kitchen, but Fujitaka had risen to the challenge. Keeping enough food to stock a small grocery store and doubling all the recipes and making two batches almost made it seem like Nadesiko-san was alive again.

He heaved a twenty-five pound bag of flour, a 15 pound one of sugar, and the Super DeLux Econo Bakery Sized can of baking powder on the counter, as Sakura-san and Tomoyo-san staggered under the weight of flavorings and decorations. Tsukishiro-kun hauled four gallons of milk, Akizuki-san enough shortening and buttter to grease Tokyo Tower, and Kero-kun and Spinel-kun manfully -- well, he amended, catfully -- carried ten pounds of chocolate chips between them.

Fujitaka looked around. He had the Scottish Terrier apron. Sakura-san had the winged heart apron. Tomoyo-san had a ruffled one, Tsukishiro-kun the monkey one, and Akizuki-san a heart one. Spinel-kun wore a small apron with a winged cat, and Kero-kun one with a winged bear.

"Hands clean?" he asked.

Four pairs of shining hands and two pairs of gleaming paws were held up.

Fujitaka picked up the bag-opener and held it up, pausing for effect. He slashed open the flour and the sugar, and declaimed, with all due drama, "Let's make some cookies."

Even Spinel cheered.

\-----------------------------------------------------------

Touya was begining to really dislike Hiiragizawa's attitude. The problem was that was no reason to resent it -- Hiiragiwaza was merely being happy, cheerful, helpful, friendly and energetic in the most annoying way he possibly could. It _had_ to be deliberate. Nobody could possibly be THAT grating and yet skate so delicately on the edge of making his companions snap without knowing precisely what he was doing and how far he could push it.

Which was another thing Touya hated. The thought that Hiiragizawa had sized him up well enough that he COULD skate that narrow line.

Hiiragizawa bounced ahead of them. "The second floor of this building has some really cute shops!" he said. "And I'm sure Sakura-san would love the stuff they have!"

And if he called Touya's sister 'Sakura-san' one more time, Touya was going to shove his obnoxiously perfect tie down his throat. Touya reluctantly followed him into the building. At least, he thought, That Brat didn't like Hiiragizawa, either.

\------------

Spinel stopped turning the flour shifter for a second, and sniffed the air suspiciously.

"Something wrong, Spinel-kun?" asked Fujitaka, not ceasing to cream butter.

"Not exactly," said Spinel, carefully. Nakuru turned and looked at him from where she was cutting sugar cookies. Then she stopped and closed her eyes.

"Oh, dear," she said, giggling.

\-----------

Syaoran and Touya got on the elevator. Eriol had lingered in front of a sweets shop and then discovered that his shoe was untied, so Syaoran was impatiently holding the door open. Eriol hurried up, all fluster and apology, and Syaoran took his finger off the door as Eriol began to step in -- and then stepped out again.

\-----------

Sakura stopped mixing frosting, and looked around.

Tomoyo looked at her.

Sakura had a horrible sense of deja vu. "Clow-san's aura..." She froze and looked at Tomoyo, who was blinking puzzledly at her. "Er, nothing," she said brightly. "Do you think the frosting is mixed enough?"

It was probably nothing, she comforted herself. Anyway, Eriol-kun only had half his magic left, what could he DO to Syaoran and Oniichan?

\-----------

Syaoran watched, like in a nightmare, as the doors of the elevator slid shut.

"I'll be back in a hour," caroled Hiiragizawa. "Be sure to make good use of your time!"

Syaoran looked at Touya.

Touya looked at Syaoran.

With one voice, they swore.

\-----------------------------------------------------------

Nakuru scowled threateningly at the empty green sugar container. "I guess we're going to have to get some more," she said, looking as if the world was going to end.

"Mmm," said Tomoyo, "And we're almost out of pastilles, too."

"I'm hungry," said Yukito, piteously.

"Yes," said Kero, "I'm sure you haven't eaten anything for at least fifteen minutes." He ducked automatically but Sakura still managed to smack him one.

"Why don't you three go to the store, then?" said Fujitaka, squinting in the oven. "We've got about twenty minutes before the sugar cookies are done, and then they have to cool."

"We'll be back in half an hour," said Yukito, as he followed Nakuru and Tomoyo out the door.

"See you then," said Sakura, waving vigourously.

"Byeeeeeeeeeeeee~!" trilled Nakuru, and slammed the door.

Sakura stopped waving and sighed, slumping a little.

"Worried?" said Fujitaka gently.

Sakura tried to smile cheerfully at her father. "Sort of. But I'm sure it will be fine." She hoped.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

Touya banged experimentally on the door of the elevator. Nobody heard it, of course.

"I doubt that will do any good," said Syaoran gloomily. "He may not be able to do massive charms anymore, but he'd probably be able to work something to make people suddenly decide to take the stairs for their health."

Touya called the absent Eriol something even Syaoran hadn't heard. "What are we going to do, then?" he snapped, glaring at Syaoran, which was patently unfair.

"Wait for an hour?" said Syaoran, acidly. He glared at Touya and Touya glared back. "And you can't blame this on me," added Syaoran.

"He's YOUR relative," said Touya.

Syaoran gaped at him. "He's half of YOUR father's last incarnation!"

Touya growled. "Bastard."

"Him or me?" inquired Syaoran politely, glaring at him.

"Him," said Touya. "For once."

"How very kind of you," said Syaoran. He slumped down to the floor. "Goddamnit, this is the SECOND time he's pulled this on me. I'm never going to hear the last of this from Aneki-tachi."

Touya stared at him, and then slid down, half-unwillingly, to the floor opposite Syaoran. "The 'second time'?" he said, carefully. One part of his mind noted, unwillingly, that The Brat seemed to have a healthy respect for his older sisters.

"The first time," said Syaoran, even more gloomily, "I was worried over how Sakura felt about me, and of COURSE Hiiragizawa noticed, and the next thing I knew, he'd locked Sakura and me in an elevator and didn't let us out until she smacked me over the head for being a damn idiot and I apologised."

"...." said Touya, and then, "How long were you in the elevator and what did you do?"

Syaoran snorted. "Two hours, and we talked. JUST talked," he added, as a vein swelled on Touya's forehead. "You ask her."

Touya stared at him consideringly. One of the Brat's few good qualities was his honesty -- it wasn't so much that the Brat couldn't tell a lie, it was that he couldn't tell one convincingly, unlike That Hiiragizawa. So if the Brat claimed Nothing had happened, he was probably telling the truth, not, he added hastily to himself, that it mattered to him.

"Hmph," he said, finally. Then he stared at the brat again, consideringly. There was something he'd been wondering about, since the day he had realised -- with some horror -- that The Brat loved his sister. That The Brat loved Sakura he never doubted; before he'd given his powers to Yukito's Other Form, he'd seen the way that The Brat's aura reached toward Sakura's, seen the first faint response of Sakura's own toward him. It was just that... "Just out of idle curiosity," he said, "What does your family think of you settling in Japan?"

"Uh..." said Syaoran.

\----------------------------------------------------------------  
"I'm sure everything will turn out all right," said Fujitaka soothingly. "Because everything turns out all right for you, Sakura-san."

Spinel reflected, again, that Fujitaka was too much like Eriol, in a strange and maybe a little unnerving way. And it wasn't even so much the similiar personalities -- although Eriol had an evil tinge to his -- well, Spinel admended, puckish, perhaps -- that Fujitaka lacked. You couldn't imagine Fujitaka creating someone with an Allergy to sweets, for instance, although you could see Eriol happily knitting small sweaters.

"For Sakura, maybe," said Cerberus, with uncharacteristic gloom. "And maybe the Kid Priest. But what about everyone else?"

Fujitaka blinked at him. "Kero-kun, what do you mean?"

Cerberus shoved several spoonfuls of cookie dough in his mouth. Spinel cringed. "Fink abouw hit," he said muffledly. He swallowed. "Think about it. Niichan's gotta back down on the Kid Priest, which ain't gonna make him happy, Tomoyo's got to be in Eriol's debt, prolly, and that's one place she never likes being, and then..." He stopped suddenly and slanted a meaningful glance at Sakura.

"I see," said Fujitaka. And he probably did, if he was anything like Eriol; Spinel sincerely doubted that anything involving his precious children got past Fujitaka, whether he acted like he knew anything or not.

Sakura wrinkled her brow. Puzzled, as usual, thought Spinel. It was rather unsettling, really, the way she could be oblivious to any and all emotional undercurrents surrounding her. Especially when she could then promptly turn around and know more than Eriol did about a situation. "Why would Tomoyo-cha..." Her voice faded out.

Spinel poked Cerberus and pointed at Sakura. His fur, and by the looks of it, Cerberus', was standing on end with the electric sense of power in the air. Cerberus looked at his mistress and drew a sharp, silent breath. Her green eyes were blank and staring at nothing.

Fujitaka, too, was glancing uneasily around. He looked at his daughter. "Sakura-san?"

"And yet somehow," said Sakura, clearly, "Tomoyo-chan, too, will be glad of what happened today." She stood watching something with a slight smile, while her father stared at her and the two guardian-beasts backed quietly -- very quietly -- away.

"I thought your master said that she'd be able to control that," hissed Cerberus to Spinel.

"Not if she wants to know," muttered Spinel back, watching Sakura's blank eyes.

"Gave me the cold creeps everytime Clow did it," said Cerberus, quietly.

"You're telling ME about the cold creeps?" Spinel checked for a hiding place out of habit. Cerberus was doing the same thing, which suggested that Eriol hadn't changed much from Clow. "Eriol used to stop in the middle of dinner and stare at nothing, and then he'd suddenly say something like 'Sakura-san just took her first step', with this huge goopy grin on his face. It creeped _Nakuru_ out, for God's sake."

"Just as long as it wasn't 'Sakura-san just got concieved'," whispered Cerberus.

"July tenth."

Cerberus winced in sympathy. "Clow never was really good at that Too Much Information thing."

Sakura blinked, and looked around. "What are you and Suppi talking about, Kero-chan?"

"How glad we are there's two of us," said Cerberus, without a blink. "Na, Sakuuuraaaa, we can have the frosting left over from the cookies, can't we?"

\-----------------------------------------------------------  
"'Uh...' what?" said Touya.

Syaoran looked at him. He was obviously not going to back down, and Syaoran supposed he had a natural interest in the question. He sighed. "It's a long story," he said, finally.

"Well, we certainly have the time to hear it," said Touya, acidly. "I don't know much about your family, but you can't tell me they just waved you off at the airport and wished you good luck and good fortune."

Which they hadn't. Syaoran tried to think of how to explain what had happened. "It kind of helped that I'm still the official Clan Head," he said finally. "But they weren't pleased, no." How to explain three years of battles, three years of clashing with his mother and the rest of the Li Clan, three years of holding on to the one thought, that one day he would be with Sakura forever? Three years of worry that she'd find someone better than him, even though he'd asked her to wait. Three years, he thought, suddenly, of living from letter to letter, of trying to explain that Sakura was more important than the Clan -- that Sakura _was_ his Clan now.

"I bet they tried to find you someone else," said Touya, staring at him. "I would have, if it had been Sakura."

Syaoran flinched. Three years of 'why don't you take your cousin out shopping' and 'you WILL dress nicely tonight, Yun Li is coming to dinner', and the ensuing battles. Three years of listening with blank politeness as girls were trotted out before him -- nice, Hong Kong girls, with good bloodlines and magic of their own -- but not Sakura. "You didn't try to find her anyone else," he said, striking blindly.

Touya gave him a long, considering look. "I knew it wouldn't be any good," he said finally. "Sakura had made her choice." He paused and stared at Syaoran again. "If they tried that, they must not know you very well."

Syaoran stared back at him. "Huh?"

Touya sighed. "The one thing I've never doubted about you is that you love Sakura. And if you love her, you'd come back to her through the fires of hell." He glared at Syaoran again. "Which does not make me like you any better."

Syaoran thought about this. He realised that if Touya _had_ suddenly decided to approve of him because he loved Sakura, Syaoran wouldn't have trusted him any farther than he could throw him. "I didn't expect you to."

Touya snorted. "So you escaped from your family and came back to my sister. What do they think of that?"

Syaoran coughed. "It, um, probably helped that Sakura's so powerful." He hoped against hope that Touya would leave it there.

Touya's eyebrow shot up. "Helped you get approval, or...?"

Syaoran knew this was coming. "Shall we say," he said, very carefully, "That there's been Clan Heads before that wanted to marry, ahem, unsuitably."

"And what," said Touya, deliberately, "Happened to them?" An acid pause. "Or should I ask what happened to the unsuitable one?"

Syaoran looked away.

"From what I know of you," said Touya, "You wouldn't mind dying but if Sakura got a scratch on her, you'd go mad."

Syaoran didn't say anything.

"This would explain the Plushie suddenly turning Big and growling at nothing," said Touya thoughtfully. "And Yuki transforming and staring at shadows. And the Cards floating around her in formation, with the attack Cards on the outside and Sheild front and center. And Hiiragizawa turning up again and casually escorting her everywhere." A long pause while he studied Syaoran's face, which, Syaoran knew, had turned hard and closed. "If it's any comfort," said Touya calmly, "I don't think you had anything to do with it. I didn't then, either."

Oddly enough, it did help. Syaoran still remembered the day he found out that Sakura was being ... targetted ... and the battle that had ensued. "After a while, they decided it was better to welcome her into the family," he said neutrally.

"So they could have control of the Cards," guessed Touya.

Syaoran shrugged. Touya let out a long breath. "I don't mind you too much, Brat," he said finally, "But God Almighty, what a bunch of in-laws for my baby sister."

Syaoran began to laugh. He couldn't help it -- it was just exactly what he had thought about his own family so many times. "I can't say," he managed, "That I'm exactly thrilled at the thought, either..."

Touya studied him and then broke into a grudging smile. "Her in-laws or yours?" he demanded, and Syaoran simply howled with laughter. He was laughing so hard that he accidentally hit the open button, and the elevator doors obediently slid apart.

Syaoran stopped laughing. He looked at Touya. Touya looked at him.

"THAT SON OF A BITCH!"

\-----

Eriol heard the howl, in enraged unison, from three shops away, and his face spilt in a wide, happy smile. He'd known they'd get along perfectly if they only had a reason.

\-----

Touya and Syaoran conducted a complete search of the vicinity, but either Eriol had wisely lit out for safety, or, more probable, he was managing to stay three steps ahead of them. As annoying usual.

"Bastard," said Syaoran, stomping bitterly through the malls. "Smiling weasel."

Touya trumped his insult.

"I doubt it," said Syaoran, fair despite himself, "From what I hear of his mother, anyway."

Touya growled, and swept the area round with a glance. He paused suddenly. "Hey, Badtz-maru."

Syaoran looked. "...," he said, and slanted a suspicious look at Touya. "I hope you're not suggesting what I think you're suggesting, Kinomoto."

"Aw, c'mon, Li... what can one little, bitty, tiny girl the size of thistledown DO to you?"

"I dunno, what CAN'T she?" Syaoran regarded the glaring penguin doubtfully. "I think it looks more like you, anyway."

"Thanks," said Touya dryly.

"Anyway," added Syaoran, "What would DAIDOUJI do to me?"

"So you're more worried about what your girlfriend's best friend is going to say than what your girlfriend herself is going to say?" demanded Touya.

"Sakura wouldn't say a word," said Syaoran. "But if I give her something bad, Daidouji will give me bloody hell."

Touya had to give him the point. "Speaking of Tomoyo..."

"Yeah?" Syaoran studied a display of Angel Kitty merchandise.

"What are you going to do about her?"

Syaoran suddenly became even more interested in the display. "What about her?"

Touya gave him a Look. "You're not that dumb."

Syaoran sighed. "There's not a lot I _can_ do, is there? She's going to be like that whatever I do." He hesitated. "Sakura's so... fond of her, anyway, and I... well, she's my friend, too, even when she could have come between us. I ... don't want to hurt her, so..."

Touya studied him for a long, long moment. "You could set her up with Hiiragizawa," he suggested.

Syaoran cringed. "Oh, God, no." He looked at Touya. "That was a joke, right?" Touya raised one eyebrow and waited. "...You're not joking," said Syaoran. He stared at Touya. "Why?"

Touya shrugged. "You don't think they'd get along?"

"I think they'd be damn scary together," said Syaoran bluntly. "And I think Daidouji would rather be together with a barracuda. Why do YOU think that?"

Touya shrugged. "Just a feeling," he said, obscurely. "Are you going to get Sakura something Angel Kitty?"

They regarded the stacks of blue, winged cat thoughtfully for a second. "Not pink enough," they chorused, and moved off.

\------

Eriol was torn between laughter and irritation. He was glad they were getting along, yes, but then again... He sighed. He wasn't surprised that Touya-kun had caught something -- even without his Power, Sakura-san's brother was damn sharp -- but he wasn't sure he ... well, it stung a little. Xiao Lang was right, he supposed. Tomoyo-san had watched Sakura-san too long to ever turn her eyes away. He sighed again.

He could think about Tomoyo later. Right now he had to keep an eye on Xiao Lang and Sakura-san's brother.

\--------

Akizuki-san's eyes had the slightly maniac gleam of someone who had not only been dipping in the chocolate chips, but the cookie dough, the cocoa, the hard candies, the gingerbread, the icing for the gingerbread house, the candied fruits, the sugar [when she had a chance] and the coffee, to boot. Yukito supposed she had been fairly good about it. No sneaking around for Akizuki-san; she took what she wanted and dared anyone to say anything about it.

::Pig,:: commented his inner voice. Yue-san, Sakura-chan called him.

::She's just got a healthy appetite,:: said Yukito, automatically, although he really had no idea why he was defending her.

::Healthy like a pig,:: said his inner voice, sourly.

::You don't eat, so how would you know?:: Yukito thought about this for a second. ::And I eat as much as she does.::

::She's still a pig,:: said his inner voice, decidedly. Yukito gave up.

"Ne," said Akizuki-san, happily.

::Oh, God,:: moaned Yukito's inner voice. Yukito wished, again, he could kick him.

"'Ne', what?" said Suppi, warily.

Nakuru gave Suppi a big, happy smile. "Suppi hasn't had ANY sweets at ALL~!"

::...:: said Yukito's inner voice.

Yukito had to agree.

"Grab him, Cerberus!" cried Akizuki-san, happily. Suppi shot around the room like a panicked arrow.

It was no use.

\-------

"Damn," said Syaoran, "How many stores have we gone into?"

"Too many," said Touya, who hadn't shopped so much since -- well, since they were fitting out the baby things for Sakura. [His father, of course, had been mildly freaked out by Touya and Nadeshiko's insistence on pink and cherry blossoms, but then again, as he had said at the time, they were the ones with Power, not him.] "And we've got to meet HIM soon, too."

There was a brief pause while both imagined several things to do to HIM, mostly involving stringing him by his toenails.

"There's a jewelry store over there," said Touya, pointing. "Although, after all that..."

Syaoran rubbed the back of his neck. Shopping should not be this stressful. But it was, because he wanted it to be perfect for Sakura. "We might as well look," he said. "Hey, Kinomoto."

"Yeah?" Touya studied the display in the window.

"Wanna make a bet?"

Touya raised an eyebrow. "What type of bet?"

"I bet Daidouji never said he couldn't lock us in an elevator."

"Tomoyo?" Touya thought about this for a second. "Nah... she would have covered that."

Syaoran shook his head. "I say she didn't."

"Yeah? If she did, you're buying me the biggest damn steak I can find."

"And if she didn't, you're buying me two pounds of chocolate." Syaoran held out his hand. Touya shook it to seal the bet.

Touya studied the display again. "Hey, Li."

"Hey, what?"

"I think I just found your present for you." Touya made a noise in his throat composed of disgust and amusement. "I can't believe I just said that."

"What is it?" Syaoran looked in the window.

\-------------

Spinel was huddled in a corner over a tall pile of sweets, sobbing unrestrainedly. "Mine," he wailed, glaring around as if he expected someone to take them by force. "Miiiine." He hiccuped. "All miiiine."

"...," said Fujitaka, Sakura, Kero, and Yukito. Nakuru was rolling on the floor, screaming with laughter.

"Of course they are, Spinel," said Tomoyo, soothingly. "Nobody will take them from you."

"Cerberus might," wailed Spinel. "He likes sweets. But these are all mine. Don't let him take them from me."

"...," said Fujitaka, Sakura. Kero and Yukito again. Nakuru was in tears of laughter by now.

"How long until he falls asleep?" whispered Sakura.

"I WON'T!" howled Spinel. "Because my sweets might get stolen...." He fell over onto them and began to snore.

"...," said Fujitaka, Sakura. Kero and Yukito. Nakuru giggled helplessly.

\-------------

Syaoran lifted the little necklace with near reverence. It was a pretty thing in and of itself, with a delicate gold chain. But what really made it perfect was the pendant -- a tiny golden teddy bear, perfect in every detail, holding a small, quartz heart.

"You're blushing," said Touya, jabbing him.

"I am not," said Syaoran automatically. Then he realised that he was, which made him turn redder.

"Would you like to get it, sir?" asked the pretty salesgirl, smiling sympathetically at him.

"Yes, I would," said Syaoran, still staring at it. It was so pretty. So...Sakura.

"Hmm," said an interested voice behind him. "Sakura-san should like that."

Syaoran and Touya turned around and skewered Eriol at a glance. The saleslady, an intelligent girl, wrapped up the pendant and rang it up in record time, hoping all the while that those two apparently normal young men would restrain their obvious urge to kill the handsome one that had just come up behind them and was now smiling benevolently upon them.

They did, but the salesgirl reflected, uneasily, that the way they were pushing him out the door didn't look very good. And she really hoped she hadn't heard the tall one say, "Perhaps we could have a little TALK about you and elevators, Hiiragizawa..."  
\-------------

"We're back," said Touya and Syaoran in unison. Eriol said nothing, which was perfectly understandable, considering that his tie was stuffed up his mouth and he was hanging, with surprising docility, in a half Nelson between Syaoran and Touya, his suit ruined by the what was apparently all the snow in the park, well rubbed in.

Sakura skidded into the hallway, followed closely by Yukito and Tomoyo. "Welcome ba--" She stared.

"Mgghffph, mmpph ffrrummpphomn, Fnfunnfa-ffn," said Eriol cheerfully.

"'See, they're both here alive and getting along, Sakura-san'," translated Syaoran. "Hey, Daidouji -- Kinomoto and I are kind of curious."

"About what?" asked Tomoyo, eyes narrowed on Eriol suspiciously.

"I bet him a rare steak against two pounds of chocolate that you hadn't put 'You will not lock Li-kun and Touya-san in a elevator for an hour and go off to have tea and scones' on that list of things he wasn't allowed to do."

"Eriol-kun, you didn't!" wailed Sakura.

"Mmmy mffpnfft fmph, Fnfunnfa-ffn," said Eriol, soothingly.

"'They were perfectly safe, Sakura-san'," translated Touya, twisting on Eriol's arm a trifle. Eriol gave him a pained look.

Everyone looked at Tomoyo.

She glared at Eriol in a way that boded extremely ill for his next hour. "You get the chocolate, Li-kun."

Eriol spat the tie out and twisted his way lithely out of Touya and Syaoran's grips. "Well," he said, looking excessively pleased with himself, "I think that broke the ice."

\--30--  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
1.) Meimi: **upon reading draft** XD And aaaallll I want for Christmas [besides these 2000 other items, of course] is Touya-kun, allllllllll wrapped up and unconcious under the tree~!  
Meg: XD

2.) Yes, there is a sequel planned. ^_^

3.) For Tin, since I adopted the original idea and then ran screaming away with it, as she egged me on with the Eriol x Tomoyo bit, and dedicated to Shi-chan, whose Love Reflection fics were my first introduction to S&S screaming fangirlhood AND the Doberman joke. ^_^

4.) Spinel's breath weapon, a ruby light beam, can be used even when he's chibi, unlike Kero's fire. ^_^; Blame Amy for that joke, proposed after we saw The Suppi Episode.

5.) I counted back, and I'm PRETTY sure Sakura would have been concieved in early July. It was an irresistable tempation.

6.) For those of you not familiar with Sanrio products, Badtz-Maru is an extremely annoyed looking penguin type critter. He actually look kind of like Touya, what with the spiky hair and things. ^_^ 


	2. Icebreakers

Notes at end. CCS is copyright CLAMP and associates, no archive without permission, this fic is copyright 2001 Meg, and she will bite you if you take it.

Feedback is always welcome!

\----------  
"It's very good jam," said the Queen.  
"Well, I don't want any _to-day_ at any rate."  
"You couldn't have it if you _did_ want it," the Queen said.  
"The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday, but never jam  
to-day."  
"It _must_ come sometimes to 'jam to-day'," objected Alice.  
"No, it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every _other_  
day: to-day isn't any _other_ day, you know."

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

ICEBREAKERS: JAM TOMORROW

 

This conversation happened at least once a month, and it never failed to amuse her.

"Hey," whispered a girl. "That boy -- who is he?" She pointed discreetly.

"Him? That's Syaoran Li."

"He's cute," said the first girl. "And so strong and silent-looking!" A heart appeared above her head. "I wonder what would happen if..."

The second girl shook her head, and held up one finger. "Li-kun is very smart--" she held up another finger "--and he's good at sports, and he doesn't say much, and he's very kind--" holding up more fingers as she listed Li-kun's good qualities "-- and he's actually kind of shy and he doesn't realize that a lot of girls like him."

"He's perfect," squealed the first girl.

"But he has one fault."

"Oh?"

The door slid open. "Good morning!" chirped Sakura-chan to the world at large.

Li-kun lit up.

"Syaoran-kun!" sang Sakura-chan, bouncing toward him. "Good morning! Guess what guess what, I did all the math by myself and I didn't even have to ask Daddy about any of it, and will you check it for me, please?"

Li-kun turned the brilliant smile he reserved only for Sakura-chan on her. "Did you, Sakura?"

The first girl's face went slack. It went slacker as Sakura-chan bent over Li-kun's shoulder as he checked her homework.

"I knew you could do it," said Li-kun, smiling up at her and catching her hand in his own. Sakura-chan beamed back at him.

"No way," said the first girl. She looked ready to cry.

"He came from HONG KONG for her," said the second girl, tragically. "And a girl from the D class tried to break them up, and not only did she fail, Daidouji-san offered to bring her down. And Li-kun told her that he 'didn't appreciate' girls like her, and if she ever upset Kinomoto-san again, she'd regret it."

"Did she try?"

The second girl shook her head. "You've never seen Li-kun angry. He made the leader of the tough gang back down once, you know."

Tomoyo's mouth twitched. She remembered that girl quite well -- she'd upset Sakura-chan, and Tomoyo had suggested that she stop, or else she, Tomoyo, would make transferring to, say, America [or the ends of the earth], look very attractive. She hadn't quite believed Tomoyo at first. She had after a short, sharp demonstration of the power that Tomoyo could command when she felt like it. Tomoyo preferred playing nicely, because Sakura-chan got upset when she didn't, but everyone at school knew that it was not an intelligent idea to upset Sakura Kinomoto. Word had invisibly oozed out that Tomoyo found such people irritating, and irritating Tomoyo Daidouji was not, precisely, good for one's health.

Sakura-chan bounced over to her. "Tomoyo-chan! Syaoran-kun said I got ALL my math right!"

Tomoyo smiled at her. "I'm glad," she said, sincerely.

She was glad that Sakura-chan was so happy. She'd decided a long time ago that she'd rather have Sakura-chan be happy, would rather have her be with someone else, than upset or confuse her with what Tomoyo felt for her.

If you held someone too closely, if you refused to let them blossom in the way they were meant to, you couldn't even see their happy face. That's what she had learned from her mother's experience. So she'd never spoken, never would speak. Because, even if it hurt to see Li-kun receive Sakura-chan's brilliant smiles and her affectionate caresses, and all her confidences -- even if she wanted to have all of them, even if she wanted to be the one with her arms wrapped around her, stroking her hair, being with her and belonging to her in a thousand tiny ways -- Tomoyo still would not come between them. And she could. How easily she could. But she would not, because even the envy that bit at her was infinitely better than becoming her mother, living only for memories, hating the one that her dear one had chosen, never seeing her at all.

Half a loaf was better than none, they said. But sometimes, in the far corners of her mind, she found it a very dry and bitter one, indeed.

\------

Eriol heard this conversation at least once a month, and, unlike Tomoyo, it did not amuse him at all.

"Hey, who's that girl?" whispered someone, whom Eriol labeled 'Boy A'.

"You living under a rock?" demanded another, dubbed 'Boy B'. "That's Tomoyo Daidouji. Richer than hell, star of the chorus, in Student Government and top of the class."

"She's cute," said Boy A, salivating. "And some class, too. She involved? Or available?"

"Techn'cally," said Boy B, "She's not involved. In reality --"

Sakura-san bounced into the room. "Tomoyo-chaaaaaaan~!"

Tomoyo-san lit up.

"Tomoyo-chan, will you look at my paper? I think it's all right, but you're always so good at it and I'm kind of nervous about it, so --" she held out a sheaf of paper and fixed Tomoyo-san with pleading eyes. "I was going to ask Eriol-kun, but he's really busy and you know what Syaoran-kun thinks of essays..."

"But of course," said Tomoyo-san, looking up at Sakura-san with tenderness and affection radiating from her like a nimbus.

Sometimes Eriol wondered whether the real tragedy was that Sakura-san was so used to being loved, and loving back, that she never realized, unless she was shown, that there was a difference in the way someone felt for her.

Boy A stared at the two girls. "No way," he said.

"Daidouji," said Boy B inelegantly but expressively, "Plays for a different team."

"Has anyone tried to convince her otherwise?" Boy A looked as if he would like to try. Eriol took four or five deep breaths and reminded himself, forcefully, that he did not want to give Boy A a black eye.

"Lots. But you haven't been ignored until Daidouji looks through you." An expressive wiggle of eyebrows. "And I hear someone tried to make an issue of it, and Li about ripped him a new one."

Boy A blinked. "Is Li interested in her?"

"Hell, no. They say the day that he and Kinomoto break up is the day hell freezes over, and Daidouji's Kinomoto's best friend -- at least, that's what Kinomoto thinks, and Daidouji hasn't explained any different to her. Li kind of has to be friends with her whether he wants to or not. But like I said, some idiot tried to press the issue, and Li sailed into him. And HIIRAGIZAWA backed him up."

Boy A cringed.

"Not only," said Boy B, impressively, "Not only did they practically have to carry that moron out on a stretcher, Hiiragizawa got Li and himself _completely_ out of trouble, and they say if he had talked five minutes more they would've got rewards of merit."

Boy A whistled, and the two of them walked off.

Eriol sighed. He wasn't ... used to feeling so helpless, as if he could do nothing but pine away like an Eighteenth Century poet, sighing his life away over a lock of hair. Even as Clow, even as he had nearly despaired under weight of his own power, he had _done_ something, even if it were just the careful, slow planning that had produced Sakura-san and his eventual release.

Clow had been used to slow plots. He'd thought nothing of setting one thing in motion to bear fruit years later. But Eriol was mortal now, and suddenly too old and too young to stand the strain that a plot to win Tomoyo, as complicated and precise as such a campaign would be, would have on him. And he hated manipulating people. Prodding Syaoran to make him blush or try to kill him was one thing. [Eriol liked to consider himself a nice boy, but Syaoran made a target that would tempt a saint.] Deliberately setting out to capture Tomoyo was another thing entirely.

And yet it would be so easily done. Eriol had a carefully cultivated knack for observing people and relationships like points on a map, or a stand of dominoes. That knack had only failed him once, and that had been because he didn't keep in mind that Yukito and Yue had been designed to function separately, and he hadn't considered that Yue would refuse, or not know, that he could override Yukito's Heart with his own. [Also, Eriol had a sneaking suspicion that Yue and Yukito's Hearts were a bit closer than Yue would willingly admit.] And he'd foolishly assumed that Syaoran was like the rest of his clan -- but he was glad of that. It had worked for the best after all.

Idly, he wondered how that knack had manifested itself in Fujitaka. A feel for where things went in a dig, perhaps.

It would be so easy. He could see the points and connections clearly -- nudge that one there, move Sakura-san gently there, and then one small tap and Tomoyo would fall, like the last domino, to Eriol. It tempted him. How terribly it tempted him. But ... Tomoyo-san had that same knack, even without magic to support it, and she would realize, eventually, what had happened.

He was sick unto death of manipulating people. He never wanted to do it again.

\------

Syaoran heard this conversation at least once a month, and it never failed to make him wonder at the workings of the female mind.

"Hey, hey," whispered one girl, "Who's that boy?"

"Him? That's Eriol Hiiragizawa." The other girl gave a long, dreamy sigh. "Isn't he _handsome_? He's from England, you know, and he's really smart and athletic and polite."

Two sighs, heaved as if coming from the bottoms of their pattering hearts. Syaoran cast his eyes to the heavens and prayed for patience.

"Does he have a girlfriend?" She said this as if her life and eternal happiness depended on Hiiragizawa's availability.

If Syaoran had been female, and offered the choice between Hiiragizawa and a shark, he would have taken the shark. Sharks weren't apt to plot evil pranks behind one's back. Girls, Syaoran decided, not for the first time, were really weird.

"Noooo..." said the second girl. "At least, he never really dates and they say he had a Tragic Romance back in England."

That reminded him, when Hiiragizawa had left the first time, Daidouji had seemed to think that Hiiragizawa and That Teacher were pretty tight. But then again, hadn't Sakura just said she'd got a letter from That Teacher saying she was about to be married? Syaoran shrugged mentally. It was Hiiragizawa's business, not his.

"Does he pay attention to anyone?" The first girl had gone into dewy-eyed sparkles at the thought of Hiiragizawa's supposed tragic romance.

"Not really," said the second girl. "He calls Kinomoto-san 'Sakura-san', and she calls him 'Eriol-kun', and he calls Daidouji-san 'Tomoyo-san' sometimes, but she never calls him anything but Hiiragizawa-kun. And Kinomoto-san doesn't know there's another boy in the world besides Li-kun."

Li-kun was forced to preen.

The door slid open. "Hiiragizawa-kun," said Daidouji crisply. Her tone suggested that she not only had Hiiragizawa's number, she wiretapped it and kept logs.

Hiiragizawa -- Syaoran felt his jaw sag. There was no way in hell Hiiragizawa had lit up.

"Yes, Tomoyo-san?" He HAD lit up. Maybe not very visibly, but the difference was -- Syaoran gaped. There was no way in hell he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. Hiiragizawa was absolutely not looking at Daidouji with that look on his face. Syaoran knew what that look was, because it spread across his own face whenever Sakura got within fifty feet of him.

Hiiragizawa and Daidouji's dark heads bent close together, absorbed in some arcane detail of student government. Syaoran watched them. He was probably wrong. He hoped he was wrong. Nobody knew as well as he did what Daidouji felt for Sakura. And Hiiragizawa never numbered stupidity among his faults, nor lack of observation. If he did like Daidouji, he was setting himself up for a hard and painful fall.

Hiiragizawa could handle it. He'd have to handle it.

Hiiragizawa was technically family.

Family did not let family take a fall like the one Hiiragizawa was about to take.

Dammit.

\------

If any conversations happened around Sakura, she neither heard nor remembered them. Of course some people found Eriol-kun attractive, and Tomoyo-chan was so nice and sweet and pretty, people were bound to like her, and Syaoran-kun, as far as Sakura was concerned, had hung the stars and moon. And of course everyone agreed with her.

So she never listened at all.

\------

There was to be a festival in a month, and the school was grinding, ponderously and with many loud groanings and squeaks, into full gear. Tomoyo and Eriol, in particular, had their fingers in so many school pies that [said Spinel] they could have opened their own bakery. Eriol didn't belong to any clubs, but he was in the student council, and Tomoyo was the president of the choir, and in student council, too, and they had been roped, upon the discovery that Eriol played the piano well ["You'd think Hiiragizawa had played it for a hundred years," said the music teacher, in awe. Eriol had been suppressed by Tomoyo, forcibly, before he managed to say 'since it was invented, sensei', but it had been a near thing], into a piece at the concert, and they had yet to agree on what it would be. Eriol wanted something 'fun' or operatic. Tomoyo wanted anything he didn't want, and preferably something she had a chance of getting right before the festival and/or something she already knew. Syaoran thanked the gods and his ancestors, loudly, that it was them and not him, and refused to be drawn into the discussion. Sakura blinked at them and ventured an opinion that whatever Eriol-kun and Tomoyo-chan did would be really pretty. Eriol thanked her for her opinion, and proposed Andrew Lloyd Weber. Tomoyo smiled happily at Sakura and told Eriol, with sweetness in her voice and daggers in her tone, that if he thought she was going to learn 'Think of Me' in time for the concert, he had another think coming.

At this point, Sakura and Syaoran would escape to their own club duties -- Sakura had a new and complicated routine to learn for the cheerleading club, and Syaoran was in the martial arts 'thing', as he called it -- and leave Eriol and Tomoyo arguing over the relative merits of 'Tit-willow' and 'Maples'. Eriol would pull out all the tricks learned through two lifetimes, flirting, cajoling, whining and reasoning, and Tomoyo, face slightly flushed and eyes snapping, would fend off all his attacks and get in a few good blows of her own.

Currently, they were involved in a mostly amiable discussion of why Tomoyo was absolutely not going to sing 'Ave Maria', even if she was a soprano and Eriol could play it in his sleep, in the music room. Eriol, at the piano bench, moved his hands absently over the keys, sometimes going into small riffs and bits of melody.

As much as Tomoyo hated to admit it, it was one of the things she actually liked about Hiiragizawa-kun. It was hard to completely despise and crush someone who loved the piano so much he could make it express his emotions as well as his own face or voice.

"But it would be so pretty," said Hiiragizawa-kun, wistfully. He managed to look both pathetic and hopeful.

"No, Hiiragizawa-kun," said Tomoyo, firmly. "Absolutely not."

He pouted cutely, and the piano made a hopeful trill like baby birds cheeping for food. "I know you can sing it," he said. "I've heard you singing bits of it."

"I'm not doing it for the school festival," she said. "No. And 'singing bits of it' is entirely different than singing it, in its entirety, in front of an audience."

Hiiragizawa-kun's lower lip stuck out more. "Sakura-san would like it."

Tomoyo wavered for a few seconds, and then caught the glint in his eye. "Hiiragizawa-kun," she said, sweetly, "If you don't stop bringing Sakura-chan into this I'm going to push you out the window."

Since the relative absurdity of Tomoyo pushing Eriol, who was fully six inches taller and considerably more solid than she, out the window was more than countered by the fact that the music room was on the third floor and well equipped with heavy objects and things that could be used to pull a body to the window after it had been struck unconscious from behind, Eriol desisted. He was pretty sure he could counter any attack she made, but Tomoyo-san was, well, Tomoyo-san.

And Tomoyo-san was the only one who came even close to being as sneaky as Eriol himself, and SHE had no magic to rely on.

He pushed aside the lovely thought of Tomoyo on stage, with her face lifted to the ceiling, eyes closed as she entered into the never-realm she lived in while she sang, and those old Latin words pouring from her throat. He examined it before he pushed it aside, and discovered that it involved, in no particular order, a low bodice, Tomoyo's throat and the effect of a red rose in the former against the latter, and pushed it aside even more quickly.

"We've got to do something," he pointed out. His hands moved absently over the keys, picking out the bare bones of a song.

Tomoyo pulled a face. "I don't want to learn something really hard for the concert."

"We are rather busy, aren't we?" When I was alone and waiting, sang the piano, were you waiting for me?

Tomoyo turned and stared at him. "What song are you playing?"

He blinked and looked down at the piano, and his fingers, still moving gently over the keys. "Er..." He cleared his throat. "Just a song," he said. Naturally his fingers would fiddle with this song. Naturally.

When I looked up at endless stars, asked the piano, softly, did you see the same ones I'd see?

"It's a pretty tune," said Tomoyo-san, thoughtfully. "Does it have words?"

"Yes," he said. Of course Tomoyo-san would like this song. "It does, actually."

\----------

"So you and Eriol-kun decided on a song?" Sakura chewed her pencil over an equation. She hated the silly things; funny puzzles that always just eluded her. But she was bound and determined to go through one term without calling Syaoran-kun, who was in such a harder math class than her, every living night to figure them out.

She always had better things to talk about with Syaoran-kun when they called each other, although come to think of it, it pretty much boiled down to 'bill bill coo coo kiss kiss'. Which was perfectly fine by both of them, although lately their conversations had begun to seep over to the question of what to do with Tomoyo-chan. Sakura knew that Tomoyo-chan wasn't ... quite ... happy, and she also knew that if she told Tomoyo-chan she knew this, Tomoyo-chan would be very upset. Sakura's instinct was to find her a person that she could love like Sakura loved Syaoran, but the sixth instinct that had grown stronger over the last few years told her that it might not be the best solution. Yet.

Come to think of it, she hadn't mentioned that sixth instinct to anyone yet. She ought to ask Eriol-kun about it. It wasn't foresight or telepathy, she didn't think, it was just an awareness of what went where. And when she was with Syaoran-kun she had a tendency to do things just as he blinked at her and said he was about to do it. And she could tell Tomoyo-chan's and Syaoran-kun's and Oniichan's moods, and, to a lesser extent, Daddy's and Eriol-kun's. She never really bothered with trying to read Kero-chan and Yukito-san's moods.

Tomoyo-chan's mood right now seemed to be pretty calm. "Yes," she said. "He was playing something while we were, er, discussing it, and I decided I liked it. And it's easy enough to learn for the festival."

She almost had the wretched equation now. **This** went **there** and slid into place... "Whatever you two do is going to be really pretty." And then **that** went **here** ...

Tomoyo-chan cleared her throat. "Sakura-chan."

"Hmm?"

"You're singing again."

Sakura looked up. "I was? I mean, what song?"

Tomoyo-chan giggled. "It was one of your silly songs. 'Stupid number, O Mister Stupid Number, come over here and go where you belong. Miss Wretched Number, you stupid number, why don't you fall into place.'"

Sakura smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was even humming."

Tomoyo-chan shook her head and gave her that look again, the tender one that Sakura knew so well. "I like hearing you sing."

Tomoyo-chan really needed someone, thought Sakura distantly. Someone who would look at her the same way she looked at Sakura. Because ... Sakura could never look at her like that, and even if it was something that could not be helped, it still made Tomoyo-chan sad.

She bent her attention to the equation again.

\--

Sakura-chan was singing under her breath again, something about an equation being like a human heart, yes, you don't understand it but it all adds up somehow.

\--------

For the next few weeks, their lives were mainly composed of classes, club meetings, banging things together with hammers [Sakura hit her thumb, of course, and nearly broke it], practicing, more club meetings, gluing things onto felt [Syaoran nearly glued himself to the felt instead of the flower, and sulked about it all day, especially after Eriol's section won universal praise], more practicing, late nights painting things [Tomoyo got so mad at Eriol, between his calmness at the face of the thousand different minor tragedies inherent in a school festival, and, well, various Eriolian misdeeds, that she almost poured a can of paint over his head], more club meetings, more classes ...

The only bright spot of those hectic weeks, in fact, was the lie that Yamazaki-kun told with Eriol. Yamazaki-kun had nearly wept tears of joy when Eriol moved back from England, and they had told a few whoppers now and then -- but nothing truly monumental. This, Yamazaki-kun clearly felt, was something that had to be remedied. Also, Chiharu was as busy as Sakura was with the cheerleading club, and Yamazaki-kun, in the computer club, had less to do. Which meant she wasn't able to squash him, and he was as bored as it was possible to be in the middle of running around getting ready for the festival.

Their class was gathered, in various attitudes of glassy-eyed exhaustion and apathy, for a meeting. Most of them felt like if they had to go to one more damn meeting, someone was going to snap, and God help the school when they did. Sakura had lost her usual cheer, and even Tomoyo's smile was strained. Rika's unfailing gentleness was beginning to ravel at the edges, and Naoko, for one, had checked out a large horror novel about someone who had gone mad and destroyed their school, and was taking copious notes.

Syaoran slumped over the back of Sakura's chair. He was so tired he didn't give a damn about manners, he just wanted to be near Sakura. Even Eriol sat with his eyes closed, resting. He had a nagging headache, and what he really wanted to do was prop his head on Tomoyo and go to sleep and let her nice scent and the warmth of her wool-covered shoulder soothe the mice gnawing on his forehead to quietness. The fact that doing such a thing would gain him the shocked interest of the class and an instant decking by Tomoyo-san did not improve his headache.

"I hope I never have to do another festival ever again," said Chiharu, rubbing her forehead. "My head HURTS. And we still have two more weeks to go."

There were moans and grunts of agreement from the class, which resembled nothing so much, Eriol decided, than a heap of those floppy panda characters that Nakuru liked, only much less cute.

Eriol considered the chances of Ruby Moon actually condescending to cook that night. Nakuru cooked occasionally, but it was, she claimed, beneath her dignity, and besides, her function was complete when she ornamented the household with her very presence. Spinel's comments about THAT, of course verged on the profane. He could make her, of course, but even if she did it cheerfully, he still felt nasty about ordering her to do things. Which was silly, when you came to think of it, but there it was.

There was the gentle sound of someone clearing his throat.

"About festivals," began Yamazaki-kun.

Eriol woke up.

"Did you know," said Yamazaki-kun, looking sincere and innocent, "How festivals started?" The longsuffering Chiharu gave him a Look. Undeterred, he looked around the class. "A long time ago, people didn't have festivals. What they did instead was --"

Eriol felt his headache began to disappear. "-- gather in big meadows and fight each other," he said. "At least, the men did. And they called them jousts."

"I've heard about them," said Naoko, doubtfully. "They used to try to knock each other off their horses or something?"

"Yes," said Yamazaki-kun, looking even more sincere, if possible. "But of course Hiiragizawa-kun knows more about it than I do."

Eriol was aware that Sakura-san had lifted her head and was regarding him with wide, trusting eyes. He was, unfortunately, only human.

"I don't know about that," said Eriol, modestly. "But in England, a long time ago, they used to have all the knights gather to beat each other up and see who was the strongest."

"Seems kind of dumb to me," said Xiao Lang, suspiciously.

Eriol shrugged. "It was a lawless time. But after a while they started adding other things."

"Like what?" Sakura-san, as usual, was swallowing it whole.

"Well, like dances and beauty contests and things to buy," said Eriol, keeping almost to the truth. "Like haggis, for instance, in Scotland."

"Yes, haggis," said Yamazaki-kun, nodding vigorously.

"Haggis," repeated Chiharu, suspiciously.

"Sheep stomach," said Eriol cheerfully. "With the intestines stuffed with liver. And other bits."

Yamazaki-kun turned a pale green, but rallied valiantly. "In fact," he said, "They used to have contests to see who could eat the most."

"And they'd try to carry big heavy logs upright," added Eriol, "And things like that, to see how strong they were."

"That still doesn't explain about why they started festivals," said Chiharu, eyes narrowed.

"A festival in old England," said Eriol, solemnly, "Was a joust that collected money for the poor, at first. Everyone would pay sixpence -- that's about five yen, Sakura-san -- to get in, and they would donate the money for the poor, and they would have the knights fighting, and jugglers and people singing. Like Daidouji-san. But then later..."

"There was a school, in England," said Yamazaki-kun.

"Where all the students were very bad," added Eriol.

"And so for punishment, they had to put on a festival--"

"--all by themselves, and donate the money to the poor."

"It was very hard," said Yamazaki-kun, shaking his head sadly, "even harder than it is now. Because --"

"-- they had to find and make everything for it themselves." Eriol sighed deeply. "They had to make their stage, and make all the costumes from the ground up. All the girls spent months spinning and weaving and sewing--"

"-- and the boys spent that same time cutting down trees and sawing them into boards so they'd have a stage."

"And then--"

"--they had to get all the food to sell ready, and of course --"

"-- they couldn't just use a kitchen like we do," said Eriol, one eye on Sakura-san, whose eyes were as round as saucers. "They had to cook everything over a pit, and have you ever--"

"-- tried to make cookies and cake in a pit fire?" asked Yamazaki-kun, solemnly. "It was terrible. They ruined so many--"

"-- the poor starving animals in the forest wouldn't eat the scraps anymore," said Eriol, sadly. "To this day you can see piles of stone, and they're all those ruined sweets."

Sakura-san cried out, triumphantly, "Eriol-kun, you're telling a story!"

"Yes, Sakura-san, I am," he said.

Sakura-san clapped her hands in glee. "I knew you were telling a story, I knew they couldn't REALLY sell sheep stomachs stuffed with entrails at Scottish festivals! Cos that would be really gross."

And this, thought Eriol, fighting back a howl of laughter, from a person who regularly ate fermented soybeans.

\----------  
"Daidouji-san."

Tomoyo looked up. Part of her noted that Hiiragizawa-kun was still calling her Daidouji-san, and wondered why. Lately he'd been calling her Daidouji-san instead of Tomoyo-san. And he hadn't called her Miss Tomoyo for a very long time. It was humiliating, but she almost wished he would call her Tomoyo-san or Miss Tomoyo. It made her feel like they were friends.

Or was that it? asked a small voice in her mind.

Tomoyo considered this for a moment, and tucked it firmly aside to think through later. "Yes, Hiiragizawa-kun?"

He smiled at her, and she thought, just for a moment, but very clearly, that if he smiled like that at anyone else in the world, that gentle, affectionate smile, they would go to the ends of the world to keep that smile on his face. But she'd always known that he had a beautiful, gentle smile. "I had an idea," he said, perching one hip on the corner of her desk. "I thought maybe you could come over to my house tonight to practice. Nakuru says, and I quote 'I haven't seen Tomoyo-chan for three million years, why can't you practice here for a change, cos if you spend any more time practicing at school I'm going to forget what my master actually looks like and go attach myself to Touya-kun or something'."

"We can't have that," said Tomoyo. "Touya-san would hate it." She ran through the rest of her day mentally. "I need to go home after school, I'm afraid. I haven't got my dress more than half-started and I need to put in an hour or two of work on it."

"If it would be a bother..." began Hiiragizawa-kun.

Tomoyo shook her head. "Mother's not home tonight, that's why I was planning to work on the dress."

Hiiragizawa-kun put his head to the side. "Then, why don't you eat at my house? If you're going to be alone? You could even bring the dress over, you know."

Tomoyo blinked at him. "I suppose," she said, doubtfully. "But mostly I'm working on hand seams."

"If it's seams," said Hiiragizawa-kun, practically, "I guess I can help you."

Tomoyo remembered, suddenly, Spinel making not-quite-out-loud remarks about Nakuru's clothing. And Sakura-chan's father was good at sewing too. But still. "Well, it would be a help," she said cautiously.

He smiled at her, and she found herself thinking that he and Sakura-chan had nearly the same smile. Not quite the same. But both brilliant and fit to light the world up. "Around six, then?"

"That would be fine."

At six, therefore, Tomoyo rang Hiiragizawa-kun's doorbell.

She was half-expecting the door to creak open slowly, as lights flipped themselves on and a hooded figure bowed low silently and beckoned her in, [Hiiragizawa-kun was fond of what he called 'atmosphere' and Li-kun called 'rot and rubbish'] but Hiiragizawa-kun opened the door himself.

"Hello, Tomoyo-chan!" trilled Akizuki-san, hanging off Hiiragizawa-kun's back. She was wearing a very short and very pink dress, with matching stockings held up by a garter belt with roses at the clasps.

"Hello, Tomoyo," said Spinel, from his perch on Akizuki-san's head.

"Come in, Daidouji-san," said Hiiragizawa-kun, placidly.

Tomoyo decided she couldn't be dreaming, because she didn't think even her subconscious could come up with the sight before her eyes. Her training kicked in. "Please excuse my intrusion," she said, and just barely managed not to take off her shoes at the door.

"You're not an intrusion at all," said Hiiragizawa-kun, equally politely. He turned and gestured her ahead of him. It seemed that he was scarcely aware of the fact that Akizuki-san had one leg wrapped around his waist for balance -- in fact, he absently hooked an arm around her leg to support her better. "Nakuru made stew tonight, I hope you don't mind?"

"Of course not," said Tomoyo, trying not to stare and almost managing it.

"And Eriol made strawberry tarts for dessert," said Akizuki-san, happily. "Except Suppi refuses to eat sweets so he has cheese. And we have rolls and coffee and salad and --"

"If you try to choke Sakura-san's brother like this, my girl, I don't wonder that he objects," interrupted Hiiragizawa-kun. His tone was mild, as if reminding a small child that we use indoor voices and outdoor voices, and this was indoors, sweetheart. "Relax your grip a trifle, if you please."

Akizuki-san loosened her hold by perhaps a millimeter. "--and then we just got some tea from England and Eriol made sweets and cheese sticks for Suppi and the gardens are really pretty now," she finished, without missing a beat.

Tomoyo stared at them. Every so often they did something like this, that made any outsider simply boggle at them --and yet, they obviously had no idea that they were doing something strange. It was if the three of them had been so long together, with only each other, that they weren't quite sure how normal people behaved but didn't really care, either.

"When are they supposed to work?" asked Spinel, acidly.

"After supper!" said Akizuki-san, brightly. Spinel made a sound of disgust and resignation.

Tomoyo followed them to the drawing room, and Hiiragizawa-kun politely pulled out a chair for her. Akizuki-san condescended to remove herself from Hiiragizawa-kun and bounce off for the tea and cookies. Spinel followed her, and as they left the room, Tomoyo heard them begin an amiable quarrel over how many cookies would have been left if Akizuki-san had been left to bring them herself, and what Spinel would do to her if any were quietly stuffed down his throat behind Tomoyo and Eriol's backs.

"I'm afraid we won't have a very quiet evening," said Hiiragizawa-kun.

Tomoyo dragged her fascinated eyes from Spinel and Akizuki-san and looked at him. "I don't mind," she said, truthfully. She liked Akizuki-san and Spinel as well as she did Kero-chan and Yukito/Yue-san. There was always the temptation to compare them to Sakura's guardian beings, and yet they were so absolutely unique. "They're very cheerful to have around, aren't they?" That wasn't exactly what she was trying to say, but it was close.

"Yes," said Hiiragizawa-kun dryly, "Having water fights begin at five am on a summer morning, with both combatants bursting into your room to land on your bed and demand you referee always makes me feel happy and light-hearted. And so does rescuing Spinel from the top gable of the house because Ruby Moon got him drunk again and he got disoriented. As does being frog-marched on one of Ruby Moon's shopping expeditions because 'boys should be willing to carry girls' packages for them and I'm much too delicate to carry them myself', directly after she beat me to a bloody pulp wrestling over a water gun. And so does --"

Tomoyo giggled helplessly. "Sakura-chan is always complaining like that," she said, smiling. "Kero-chan eats everything in the house, and she gets mad at him, and then Yue-san comes out and quarrels with Kero-chan. But she likes it, I think." And so did Hiiragizawa-kun, she thought. He liked refereeing quarrels, he liked being dragged on shopping trips and forced to carry several dozen shopping bags, he liked being ordered to sew yukatas and cute dresses.

Maybe, she thought, that was the way he felt the most human.

Something about that thought unsettled her, so she looked around the room to regain her composure. Hiiragizawa-kun's house, which certainly not as large as the Daidouji mansion, was large and filled with the solid weight of age. In the drawing room, there were flowers in everything from Ming vases to lumpy pink things that looked as if they'd been made by an over-enthusiastic Akizuki-san. Tomoyo herself had been trained in traditional flower arranging [and was rather good at it, of course], but she liked the graceful masses of roses and daisies and other flowers heaped carelessly about. They suited the room, somehow.

Hiiragizawa-kun played with a vase of wisteria. They were the most perfect she had ever seen, like huge pale-lavender pearls hung from jade leaves. "Are these all from your garden?" Tomoyo asked.

Hiiragizawa looked at her. "I'm afraid so," he said, not sounding very apologetic. "Every year I tell myself firmly that the garden is really quite large enough, and I should really scale it down, and every year I find myself with a dozen new plants and twice as many different seed packets to put in."

"It's nice to have a big garden," she said. The gardens at home were taken care of by gardeners, of course, but she liked to sit in them and work.

Hiiragizawa-kun pulled a face. "It's nicer to have time for things besides weeding. I give some of the flowers away, but I still end up with half of the garden in the house. Especially if Nakuru has her way."

Tomoyo thought about this for a second, and then, enlightened, said, "Isn't it so handy, then, that the children's hospital is half a mile from here."

Hiiragizawa-kun nearly managed to not turn a dull shade of red.

"That hospital's rather one of Mother's pet charities," said Tomoyo, watching him. "And I remember, the nurses are always very puzzled by those baskets of flowers and sweets and stuffed animals that appear for the little ones."

"Is that a fact," said Hiiragizawa-kun, to a squat bean-pot of roses.

Tomoyo retreated, satisfied. She'd wondered about those baskets -- the stuffed animals had a whimsical quality that had reminded her of Kero-chan and Spinel-san.

"What about you, Daidouji-san? I hear you spend some time there yourself." Hiiragizawa-kun shot her a look.

Tomoyo wasn't about to allow herself to be drawn. "It's one of Mother's pet charities," she said placidly. "Charity is excellent public relations, and a children's hospital is an excellent choice for a toy company."

Eriol briefly considered pointing out that public relations, by definition, meant making sure that people knew one was doing something, and not simply showing up and helping, while somehow forgetting the press release that featured the beautiful and talented only daughter of the Daidouji Toy Company volunteering at the hospital, when she was so busy getting straight As and winning major choral competitions. But that was her way.

"I rather like gardening," he said, dropping the subject before Tomoyo-san dropped a chair on his head. "It's soothing." He picked up one of the red roses from the jar. He liked these roses the best. They were a deep, velvety blood-crimson, and smelt of cinnamon and vanilla and the taste of honey. Spinel and Nakuru liked them, too, but Nakuru complained that the scent made her want cookies and Spinel that smelling them made him drunk. Clow's father had cherished this rose tenderly, and Eriol loved it, for that, and because of its beauty.

"What a beautiful rose," said Tomoyo-san, with polite interest. She really liked cherry blossoms better, he knew.

"It's an old type," he said. He offered the rose to her to smell. She sniffed like a curious but doubtful cat, and her eyes widened. She blinked, several times.

"It's strong," she managed finally. "Is it Damask?"

"Not precisely." Damask roses had been bred from this, after all. "But it's related."

She reached for the rose, and Eriol hesitated for a split second before deciding that he might as well be hung for a sheep.

He put one hand gently on her shoulder to hold her steady and tucked the rose tidily in her hair. He concentrated on putting it in carefully and neatly, so it wouldn't fall out. He could hear her breath, smell the faint aura of lavender and gardenia from her hair. It felt, he thought, keeping the thought as distant as he could from the rest of himself, like silk floss, or unraveled satin.

She was very still. One part of him hoped against hope that she was feeling the same tension he was, but the rest of him was sure that he was about to be decked. Or politely frozen solid for the rest of the evening -- and between the two he would infinitely prefer the decking.

He'd been trying so very hard to keep his distance. It would be stupidity at its worst to like Tomoyo-san any more than he already did, even worse foolishness to tip the balance on the fine line between affection and desire that he was already walking.

"There," he said, keeping his voice light, "That suits you."

Tomoyo-san reached up and touched the rose in her hair, and there was a long pause. Eriol felt his heart sink as he stared at the line of her back.

"Thank you," said Tomoyo, finally, She could feel him let tension of his body, subtle like a pin being taken delicately out of a balloon. She didn't like it. What she liked less was the way his hands in her hair had made her feel. Tomoyo was not quite so naive to believe that that liking someone Best meant never responding to anyone else, but this was different, somehow, than a basic, hormonal response to an attractive young male displaying signs of interest. That she could handle. She didn't know if she could handle the way she wanted to blush, to look away and retreat, so he could follow.

She didn't like it one tiny little bit, so she turned and met his eyes without flinching. For a bare second she saw the last remains of that sweet, tender look on his face, and then he folded it up and tucked it behind his mask as if it had never been.

"Hiiragizawa-kun," she began, and stopped. What was she supposed to say? 'You'd better not be falling in love with me, because I'll just break your heart'? 'Stop it, you know as well as I do that I love someone, and you damn well know who it is'? Or she could be cruel and ask what about Mizuki-sensei, but she knew that if Hiiragizawa was still in love with her, he would not look at her, Tomoyo, in that way.

There was nothing she could say, she realized. Nothing at all.

"Yes, Daidouji-san?" His smile had a bite to it, turned at himself. She would have been less than human to not feel a sudden quick distress at that acid edge to his smile, an edge that suggested that he knew that she knew, and he was making himself not care, because that was the way things always turned out for him.

And still the words to stop him, or apologize, or make it into a joke or her over-active imagination would not come, and the silence grew as thick as the scent of flowers in the room.

"Eriol!" howled Spinel, zooming in the room. "Make her STOP!"

Tomoyo was rather proud of the fact that she did NOT jump, leap away from Hiiragizawa-kun or otherwise clutch at her heart and try to recover from a screaming heart attack caused by surprise. Hiiragizawa-kun's eyes flickered slightly and then his mask descended firmly, not even leaving that smile behind it.

"Stop whom from what?" said Hiiragizawa-kun, looking resigned.

"SPEEEEEEEEEEAK! Roughly to your! Suppi-chan! And! BEAT HIM! when he! WHEEZES!" trilled Akizuki-san, marching back into the drawing room. "For! he! only! does it! to ANNOY! For he KNOWS! THAT! IT! TEEEEEASES!"

"SEE!" whined Spinel. Tomoyo blinked at him. "And she held me over the rest of the sauce for the strawberry tarts, too! And I had to breathe in the fumes! And now I'm half drunk!"

The chorus of Akizuki-san's song was apparently "WOW! WOW! WOW~!", in which Hiiragizawa-kun enthusiastically joined in.

"I! speak! SEVEERELY! to my! SU! PPI! CHAN! And beat him when he WHEEZES!" continued Akizuki-san, at top volume. "For he can! Tho! rou'! ly! En! JOY! the SU! GAR! when! he! PLEASES~!"

Hiiragizawa-kun bellowed "WOW! WOW! WOW!" and Spinel said, "Ha. Ha. Ha."

\-----

From the foyer came the sounds of polite leave-taking. Tomoyo, wisely, refused Eriol's offer to see her home. Nakuru looked at Spinel. Spinel looked back. They'd both seen the look on their master's face.

Nakuru pulled a face that meant 'that damned idiot, we just got him over Kaho.'

Spinel shrugged in a way that meant 'what do you expect of humans?'

Nakuru cast her eyes to the heavens. 'Common sense would be a little too much to ask for, wouldn't it?'

Spinel nodded.

Nakuru brightened. "Tomoyo-chan makes really fun clothes, though."

"Is that all you ever think about?"

"I think about Touya-kun, too. And food. And Eriol."

Spinel rolled his eyes.

Eriol came in the room, and looked from one to the other. He didn't actually technically read their minds, of course, but he had a pretty good idea of what went through their heads. They were staring at him in a way that made him wary. "That's over with," he said, brightly.

"Tomoyo-chan sure smells nice," said Nakuru, apparently absently. "Like lavender or something."

Eriol took a deep breath. "Really," he said. He knew exactly how nice Tomoyo-san smelt.

Nakuru turned and looked at him. Then she looked at Spinel. Spinel looked at her.

"Really nice," said Nakuru, with the air of someone running a scientific experiment. "Like, I dunno, lavender and jasmine and wossit, spice."

Eriol sat down in his chair very calmly and smiled gently at his creations, who looked back at him. Eriol was sorry to see the beginnings of a smirk on Nakuru's face. "I've never really noticed," he said, blandly.

"More vanilla, I think," said Spinel, helpfully. "And then she uses something that smells like gardenias for her shampoo. I've smelled it."

And so had Eriol. He counted to ten, and then back to one.

"Mmmm..." said Nakuru, over-thoughtfully. "I bet she uses L'Air Du Temps." She smiled happily. "I like L'Air Du Temps. Don't you, Eriol?"

Since Nakuru knew perfectly well that Eriol had once frightened an innocent saleslady [who had never seen an eleven year old boy drool at a cologne] at a perfume counter by his reaction to said perfume, he didn't feel called to answer that.

"But you know what I think," continued Nakuru, radiating innocence, "The way she smells, I bet she uses lavender dusting powder, and then she uses lavender bath oil and things. That's how you get a really layered scent, you know. Using bath oils and gels and lotions and things."

Eriol's eyes crossed.

He made a heroic effort and wrenched his mind away from the visions his treacherous body drooled over -- Tomoyo-san in the bath, Tomoyo-san rubbing silky lotion over her -- he pulled his mind away from THAT image in a hurry -- Tomoyo-san putting small dabs of perfume on her wrists and throat and the back of her knees... dear God. "I don't see why you're so interested in Daidouji-san's grooming habits," he said, and was instantly, horribly aware of the fact that his voice had dropped an octave.

Nakuru smirked.

Spinel smirked.

Eriol glared.

"Do we need a widdle cold shower and a wie-down now?" cooed Nakuru. "Let me see... I saw her at Intimately Yours the other day. She surely does have good taste in ..."

Eriol gave up every pretense of dignity, and dropped his head to his knees so he wouldn't pass out from sheer lack of blood. "I hate you," he said muffledly. Intimately Yours was the sort of lingerie shop that didn't so much display their wares as much as they draped something sheer and lacy or soft and -- Eriol's eyes crossed more -- absently over a fainting couch, as if the owner of the garment had tossed it there and was currently in a bubbling bath tub and was about to return and dress herself in front of the triple mirrors. Slowly. As someone sipped pale, sparkling wine and waited patiently, so they could go to a party and then come back and then, finally, the someone could remove it again.

Nakuru pulled his head up and examined his face scientifically. "The pupil is enlarged," she announced. "The face is flushed, and the eyes themselves are crossed. The voice of the subject has dropped in pitch, and the pulse rate is high. Shall we make a further examination, Suppi?"

"No you will not," said Eriol, amiably. "You will stop teasing your master before he kills you."

Spinel gave him a look. Spinel, of course, shared Cerberus' ability to pack sermon, text and application, and a certain "but heaven forfend that this humble servant dare know better the mighty Clow Read" acidity in one look, but Cerberus had been a scold, and Spinel merely looked volumes. Cerberus didn't do it so much anymore, although Eriol had seen him give Yue a Look once or twice -- Sakura-san wasn't the sort of person that one gave Looks to. [Of course, one of Clow's main joys in life had been doing things to make Cerberus scold. Yue was scarcely any fun to tease, because he took everything so seriously, but Cerberus enjoyed fussing and bellowing and falling dramatically over with a thud. One hated to call him a 'goofball', but the proverb about shoes and their fit certainly applied.]

"Didn't I tell you about this?" asked Spinel.

"You did," said Eriol, "but humans are famous for ignoring good advice."

Spinel sighed.  
\------

Eriol stared down at his papers, but he couldn't summon the interest in them to do anything.

"Hey, Hiiragizawa."

Eriol looked up. The Li -- definitely he was being The Li, not Xiao Lang, nor Syaoran-kun, nor even Li-kun, but THE Li -- was lounging in the door. "Yes, Li-kun?" he said, politely. Part of his mind was wary. It was terribly easy to forget that Syaoran _was_ the head of his Clan, a powerful mage with all the rights and responsibilities inherent to that, and power enough and besides to hold together his Clan. Even if he had half-left his Clan, he was The Li. His inborn power hadn't dried up merely because he was living a relatively normal life.

And now the Li part of Eriol's blood was making a desperate effort to expose his throat in the face of the Clan Head. Eriol took a deep breath. He was not Li, no matter what Clow's mother had been, and it was simply ridiculous that the Li radiating waves of power [which he doubtless didn't even know or think he was doing, for God's sake] should make him instinctively try to look small and harmless.

"Wanted to talk to you," said the Li, calmly. "And Sakura said you were over here."

Eriol laid his papers aside. "I'm here," he said. "What did you want to talk to me about?" He tried for a mocking smile. "Since you avoid me like the plague usually."

The Li thought about this for a second. "No," he said finally, "I avoid you like a nest of snakes." He came into the room and shoved his hands in his pockets.

The Li was making sure he couldn't see his hands. Eriol was so looking forward to the next ten minutes now. He busied his own with stacking the papers with mathematical precision.

"Anyway," said the Li, "I was kind of wondering."

Eriol raised an eyebrow and waited.

The Li took a slow turn around the classroom, reading notices and signs. Which meant he was trying to bring up a subject he was uncomfortable with, and Eriol could only think of one thing that the Li would be both uncomfortable with and feel the need to bring up to him.

"Sakura's brother said something kind of weird when we went Christmas shopping," said the Li, finally, studying a schedule of class duties with the attention due to the Ten Commandments, fresh from God's hands. "And I thought he was completely out of his mind, but then I started wondering."

"And what was that?" Eriol braced himself. Touya had given up his power, but none of his horse sense, and he was, if possible, even sharper than Tomoyo-san when it came to people. Especially if he thought it would affect Sakura-san.

"He said he thought you and Daidouji might make a good couple." The Li turned around and speared him at a bright-amber glance. "And I said he was out of his everloving mind."

Eriol winced.

The Li studied him for a long moment more. "And then," he said, very deliberately, "I kept on thinking about it, and I started watching you. And Kinomoto must have done something weird to my brain, because damned if you didn't look like you liked Daidouji or something."

"Is that a fact," said Eriol, fighting for neutrality.

"And then I thought, I had to be wrong, because Hiiragizawa's not stupid enough to fall for Daidouji, because I figured you'd figured out that she likes someone else." The Li was staring at him. Eriol met his eyes calmly.

"And the point of your fascinating deductions is...?" he inquired.

The Li ran his fingers through his hair, hard, and blew out a sound of disgust. "I can't believe I'm doing this. Look, Hiiragizawa, Daidouji's been in love with the same person --"

"-- with Sakura-san," said Eriol, calmly.

The Li blinked at him, and recovered. "Yes, with Sakura, since as long as I've known her. Maybe it's just a habit or something. But she's always looked at Sakura, and if you've got any idiot ideas in your head about making her like you --"

Eriol gaped at him for a second. "'Idiot ideas in your head about making her like you'?" he repeated.

The Li glared at him. "You know what I mean. Hiiragizawa -- dammit. What I'm trying to say is -- oh, hell. Look, if you want to set yourself up for a fall, I don't give a damn. But Daidouji --"

"Daidouji is part of your Clan now, and you won't allow her to be hurt," finished Eriol. His head and chest hurt dully, for some reason. That was a lie. They hurt because in some secret place, he was hurt, too.

"Yes," said the Li. "I don't want her to be hurt, because Sakura loves her, and she's my friend, too." He stopped for a moment, as if fighting some inner battle, and then he burst out, "And goddamnit, Hiiragizawa, what sort of IDIOT falls for a girl already in love, like Daidouji? Are you LOOKING to slink back to England again or what?" His hand shoved through his hair again. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't beat some sense into you right now."

Eriol blinked at him. "Do you know," he said thoughtfully, "That's the closest any Li has ever come to saying 'I'm worried about you' to me _or_ Clow?"

The Li glared at him. "Don't expect it to happen ever again. And be careful with Daidouji." And he walked out.

Eriol watched his poker-stiff back march away, and commented, not quite beneath his breath, "The sort of idiots who fall in love with girls who are already in love, like Daidouji-san, are probably closely related to the sorts of idiots who fall in love with girls that they were supposed to be destroying and taking powerful magical artifacts from."

"Screw you, too," said the Li over his shoulder, amiably.

\------

"I'm home!" called Fujitaka, prying his shoes off. "Hello, Nadesiko-san." She bent and gave him the light tingle of air that passed for a kiss now.

::Hello, darling,:: said Nadesiko-san. ::Hiiragizawa-kun-tachi and Li-kun and Tomoyo-chan are here.::

"They are? Then it's a good thing I got a lot of takoyak--"

Distantly, from the general direction of Sakura-san's room, came the sound of things being knocked over, Sakura-san shrieking, Li-kun yelping, and what sounded very much like Hiiragizawa-kun rolling in helpless laughter.

The door slammed open, and he heard the sound of gravity and the sound barrier breaking.

::Duck,:: suggested Nadesiko-san.

"taaaaAAAAAAKOOOOOOYAAAAAAAKIIIIIIIIiiiii!" screamed Kero-kun and Spinel-san. Fujitaka, on the ground and covering the takoyaki with his own body as well as he could without flattening it, reflected that it was a pity the physics professor couldn't borrow them for a sound wave demonstration. "FUJIIITAAAKAAAA [-SENSEEEIII, screamed Spinel-san, polite to the last], WE SMELL TAAAKOOOYAAAAKIIIIIIIII!"

"Yes, you do," said Fujitaka.

Kero-kun began the Takoyaki Boogie [named, of course, by Hiiragizawa-kun, who had a vaguely unsettling facility with words], which was disturbing at the best of times and apt to give you nightmares if done in midair, and Spinel-san dropped like a rock and stared at the bag that Fujitaka was still trying to protect with his life. This was actually an improvement. The last time he'd bought it, Kero-kun had spontaneously transformed, followed by Spinel-san, and they had landed on Fujitaka, demanded to know how much takoyaki he had bought, and then danced in a congo line to the kitchen. Sakura-san had turned a peculiar shade of green, not that he could blame her. The very thought of the bump'n'grind the two of them had managed made Fujitaka a trifle queasy himself.

"Daddy? Are you back?" Sakura-san's red-gold head stuck cautiously into the stairwell.

"Yes, Sakura-san," he said. "And if you could call off your guardian, we can have--"

"TA! KO! YA! KI!" yelled Kero-kun. "TA~~! KO~~! YA~~! KI~~! TAKO TAKO YAKI YAKI~! TA! KO! YA! KI!"

"I think we all know how to spell 'takoyaki'," said Fujitaka, mildly. "We can have takoyaki and cookies. And juice, if you'd like it."

Kero-kun passed into a glassy-eyed state of bliss.

\--

Tomoyo-san, Fujitaka noticed, was rather quiet. She was never what one might call loud at the best of times, but today she was ... quiet. There was no other way to put it. And she was, in some strange way, avoiding Hiiragizawa-kun, who was acting more or less normally. In a way. Fujitaka, between setting out the takoyaki and cookies and settling a mild and mostly amiable argument over how much takoyaki Spinel-san and Kero-kun were allowed, and if so, why Kero-kun was going to have his tail pulled out if he stole any of Spinel-san's again, watched her from the corner of his eye.

She was making a good effort, he decided. She smiled in nearly the same way she always did, but still...

"I wanna go to the festival," announced Kero-kun, although since he said it through a mouthful of takoyaki, it sounded more like 'I wanna gof tof da fahstibal.'

Spinel-san looked at him distastefully and swallowed his takoyaki before speaking. "It would be nice to go."

"I'm surely not carrying you two," said Akizuki-kun sweetly. "Because I intend to spend the whole day with To-ya-kun and Tsukishiro-kun."

"Akizuki-san," said Tsukishiro-kun, smiling at her, "what did I say about calling To-ya that?"

Akizuki-san thought this over and tried to shove Spinel-san in the teapot, even if he wasn't asleep. "That it if I did it again I was going to see how well I'd transform in a full body cast?"

Tsukishiro-kun smiled happily. "I'm so glad we understand each other."

Akizuki-san pulled a face but retreated. "Well, anyway, I won't. Sakura-chan and them really can't."

"'And they', you wretched child," said Hiiragizawa-kun, absently. "Or 'Sakura-chan's group'. Or anything else you please, but kindly do not slaughter this noble language."

"Yes, Professor Higgins," said Akizuki-san.

"I can carry them," said Fujitaka. He didn't mind -- Kero-kun and Spinel-san were mostly well behaved, if kept away from sweets.

"What about Sonomi-san?" demanded Touya-kun.

"Tomoyo-chan's mother?" Sakura-san blinked.

"She's going to be there, if she has to shoot the investors," Touya-kun pointed out. "And she may hate Dad, but they always end up going around the thing together." He shot Fujitaka a look.

::I think you like teasing her,:: said Nadesiko-san, thoughtfully. Fujitaka looked at her with wide, innocent eyes. ::And don't give me that look, Fujitaka-san. I've seen you do it. You look exactly like Hiiragizawa-kun whenever you do it.:: Since Fujitaka, in his heart of hearts, had to admit to a small, probably low, pleasure in making Sonomi-kun go cat-eyed and irritated, he kept silent.

There was a pause while this was considered. "Charming image," said Spinel-san, shoving another takoyaki ball in his mouth. "Although you're probably right. She hasn't met my exalted master yet, has she."

"I haven't had the pleasure of President Daidouji's acquaintance," said Hiiragizawa-kun.

"You hang round Tomoyo so much, I'm surprised you haven't made it whether you wanted it or not," said Touya-kun, more or less amiably. "I thought for sure you'd have had the Bodyguard Ladies happen to you."

Tomoyo-san definitely flinched. Fujitaka filed the fact away for further consideration.

Li-kun thought about this. "Probably didn't want to," he said, prodding Kero-kun away from his plate with the business end of his knife. "Daidouji's mother, that is. Because whenever he comes up..."

"I say he's just like Daddy," chirped Sakura-san happily.

"......," said Fujitaka and Hiiragizawa-kun. Nadesiko-san giggled quietly, and they both turned around and glared at her.

"Did Mama say something?" demanded Sakura-san. She never could see Nadesiko-san for herself, but she'd gotten used to the idea of having her around. With some difficulty, of course, but as Touya-kun said, Nadesiko-san was not a regular ghost.

"Nothing much," said Fujitaka, almost truthfully.

"She probably thinks Eriol wants to daaaaate her baby girl," said Akizuki-san, happily. "And she wants to see if he meets her requiiiiirements." It was hard to tell, but Tomoyo-san went perhaps a shade paler, and Hiiragizawa-kun a shade pinker. This was interesting, thought Fujitaka.

"He won't," said Li-kun, positively.

Sakura-san blinked at him. "Won't what?"

"Meet her requirements."

"I think I'd make rather a nice boyfriend," said Hiiragizawa-kun, mildly. "At least, I've always hoped so."

"That's as may be," said Li-kun, "but I bet I can sum up what she wants in one word."

Everyone waited.

"'God'," said Li-kun and Touya-kun at once.

Sakura-san laughed so merrily at this joke that she fell off her chair and Kero-kun tried to steal the rest of her takoyaki. Fujitaka looked up at Nadesiko-san during the issuing battle.

::Unfortunately,:: she said, ::that's not too far off.::

Fujitaka sighed.

\--  
"Professor Kinomoto," said Sonomi-kun, in about the same tones other people used for a wiggling mass of cabbage worms, "What a surprise."

Fujitaka smiled cheerfully at her. "Sonomi-kun, what a pleasure to see you. May I sit here?"

Sonomi-kun's face suggested he was perfectly welcome to sit there if she could first drop red-hot coals, or worse, on the chair, but she didn't actually object. Fujitaka hoped sincerely that Sonomi-kun would be on her best behavior -- well, for her -- and Nadesiko-san would restrain herself. Being dead had certainly made Nadesiko-san more spirited, if the pun could be pardoned. She said that since she was dead, anyway, she might as well speak her mind. Fujitaka enjoyed it very much but sincerely hoped that Nadesiko-san wasn't going to make him laugh suddenly in front of Sonomi-kun. He shuddered to think what would happen if Sonomi-kun found out that Nadesiko-san was still with him, even in spirit form.

For one thing, he was willing to bet that not even his daughter's Power could restore the damage Sonomi would cause.

"And now," said the announcer, "Daidouji Tomoyo-san and Hiiragizawa Eriol-kun would like to present an original song, 'Waiting For You Waiting For Me', if they may depend on the kindness of the audience."

The audience applauded politely. Fujitaka shifted carefully over so Spinel-san and Kero-kun could have a clear view. Sonomi-kun sat straight up in her chair, eyes bright and expectant.

::Tell her not to notice them,:: said Nadesiko-san. Fujitaka looked up at her puzzledly, and she gave him a look of infinite patience. ::Just tell her not to notice them, Fujitaka-san.::

Fujitaka felt amazingly stupid, but he said, very softly, "Don't notice Kero-kun and Spinel-san." Except it came out more like , and he blinked rapidly. It always surprised him when he managed to do something like that. It seemed like people should notice that reality had hiccuped.

Kero-kun and Spinel-san's heads poked out. They exchanged glances, and rose very quietly to Fujitaka's shoulders. He cast an agonized glance around, but nobody seemed to realize that anything was strange.

::Of course they won't,:: said Nadesiko-san, patiently. ::The song's starting.::

Fujitaka turned his attention back to where Tomoyo-san and Hiiragizawa-kun bowed on stage. She was wearing a filmy, silky ashes-of-roses colored dress with ribbons flying around it and lace foaming at the edges. Fujitaka put it at several hundred thousand yen and/or a month of very late nights for Tomoyo-san. Eriol-kun was wearing a Chinese-style suit in severe black.

The applause died down, and Eriol-kun walked to the piano, leaving Tomoyo-san alone in the spotlight.

The piano began, soft and wistful.

Tomoyo-san closed her eyes and began to sing.

When I was alone and waiting  
Were you waiting for me?  
When I looked up at endless stars  
Did you see the same ones I'd see?

Fujitaka felt Nadesiko-san's hand rest on his cheek, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw her put her other hand on Sonomi-kun's head. Kero-kun and Spinel-san crouched quietly on his shoulders, watching Tomoyo-san and Eriol-kun unblinkingly.

Oh, were you there?  
Oh, did you see me?  
When I sat alone where  
The stars fell to the night  
Waiting for you waiting for me

Eriol-kun's eyes were closed, concentrating fully on the music, and for a moment Fujitaka had a funny feeling, like he was almost the same person as Eriol-kun again, like he could see into Eriol-kun's mind, as if it was his own, because it was. Eriol-kun was thinking only of the music, of course, but underneath was the nameless, wordless delight of hearing his words sung as they were meant to be, and even beneath that, a quiet resigned ache.

He/Eriol-kun had tried so hard.

Tomorrow's never been my friend  
Today's enough for me  
The present should never end  
Now, with you with me.

And yet it hadn't been enough, and he'd been left alone again -- but not alone, he knew that. He had Spinel and Ruby Moon, and to a lesser extent, Sakura-san, though she was Fujitaka's, not his. But he could pretend, a little, that he was perhaps an uncle or a favored godfather, even if it was not the same.

But when it had lasted, when she was with him, he had been so happy. Knowing, for once, the reason that you cherished someone was because of the uncertain future, that perhaps they would part, and he would be alone again, to find his way.

Oh, were you there?  
Oh, did you see me?  
When I sat alone where  
The stars fell to the night  
Waiting for you waiting for me

Because people came together, and people grew apart, and the only thing he wanted to know of the future, the only thing he had ever wanted, was that 'everything would surely turn out all right'.

Forever, forever, can this last?  
Until those stars fall  
Until this moment joins the past  
Let those stars stay to tell  
The story of me waiting  
For you waiting for me

And Fujitaka could feel Eriol-kun's happiness -- yes, happiness was the word, not small enough for a pleasure, and yet too quiet and steady to be called 'joy' -- in Tomoyo-san's voice, in the trade between the human voice and the piano, how one made the other part of itself, how they combined to make something much more than they would be of themselves.

You were there  
You saw me

Eriol-kun loved music because it was something humans could make without magic, like he loved to cook and sew and do all the small ordinary things of an ordinary human life. He'd waited so long for them, and now he could scarcely resist grabbing greedily at them, taking all of them all at once, if he could -- a family, his family, someone to love, ordinary things, ordinary life. Loving someone in the ordinary way.

Sitting alone where  
The stars fell  
Into the night  
Waiting for you  
To wait for me

And even if feelings didn't last, did that matter? If you believed that they could, that somewhere, someone was waiting for you, just as you had waited for them.

I'm waiting for you  
Waiting for you  
To wait for me...

There was a moment like an indrawn breath, and then Eriol-kun got up from the piano, walked to where Tomoyo-san was just opening her dazed eyes, took her hand and made her bow with him.

The place exploded. Sonomi-kun bawled openly, and several members of what was obviously the Daidouji Tomoyo and Hiiragizawa Eriol Fanclubs climbed up on their chairs and yelled at the top of their lungs. Fujitaka shook his head to clear it from the last remnants of Eriol-kun's thoughts, and saw Sakura-san and Li-kun up front, cheering and clapping.

He handed Sonomi-kun his handkerchief, and looked up at Nadesiko-san. She looked back at him and smiled happily.

Yes, thought Fujitaka. What an extraordinary thing was an ordinary life, and an ordinary love.

Sonomi-kun snuffled loudly. "My baby girl," she said. "Oh, Nadesiko would have loved that song."

"Yes, she liked it very much," said Fujitaka, unthinkingly.

Sonomi-kun paused. Her eyes narrowed.

On the other hand, Fujitaka decided, looking for the best possible escape route as two magical beasts in their small forms muffled their howls of laughter at his expense in his coat pockets, Sonomi-kun swelled up like an enraged bantam hen, and Nadesiko-san rolled around in midair in an agony of giggles, there was something to be said about the extraordinary, too.

\--------

They walked quickly off the stage, just barely restraining themselves from bursting into a giddy run, or at least that was how Eriol felt. It had gone _well_ and the adrenalin from performing and the bubbling rush from knowing they had done well, and hearing and feeling the audience respond, was popping through his blood like soda water.

Tomoyo-san's eyes were so bright, like amethysts, he thought giddily, lilacs, violets, jewel-bright plums, a thousand things else, twilight clouds, wisteria blossoms, and they were laughing up at him, so happy. She clapped her hands like a delighted child and spun around, and her skirts flew around her like the petals of an iris. "We did so well!"

He couldn't help it, her pleasure and excitement made him even giddier. He picked her up by the waist and spun her around in a circle, and her laughter rang out like chiming bells, and then he really couldn't help himself, and nobody was paying attention anyway, so he kissed her.

"I do love you, Tomoyo," he said, smiling up at her, and felt her freeze in his arms.

TSUZUKU  
TO BE CONTINUED.

 

\------------------------  
 **FLEES**

Ain't I a STINKER. XD And remember, if you mailbomb me, drop rodents in my mail box or otherwise try to harm, dismember or maim me for where I ended it, I won't be able to finish it. .> Shouldn't that be 'that Meghan-san likes so much'?  
Syaoran: =_=;  
Meg: o_o What?

are Tarepanda, from Sanrio, I think. They aren't a character licenced in the States, so you have to go to Japanese bookstores to find merchandise. I have a pencil board with falling flowers and Tarepanda **^.^** and it's horribly cute.

 **The song that Eriol and Tomoyo perform is original. o_o I was going to do Purachina, read over the lyrics again and decided it wouldn't work. Yoru no Uta was also considered, but I'd already done one fic with that song [ >.> except I couldn't find the lyrics cos we were moving and the computer was disconnected, so the lyrics are more 'inspired' by Yoru no Uta, and not the actual song itself, although it IS pretty close] and it's, erm, well, an obvious choice. >.> I also thought about Koko ni Kite, the song Tomoyo sings in the second movie [**__________* Piiiiiiitty song, pitty pitty song] but the version I'm most familiar with is the guitar version, and I couldn't quite bring myself to have Elioru-kun be a guitarist, too. >.> So I wrote a song for them to sing.

\-- About the lie that Yamazaki and Eriol tell: It gave me FITS. >_.> Natto is like eating jellied gym locker debris. We tried it once and the whole house smelt like ... well. Go to a high school boys' locker room in midsummer directly after football practice and you'll have an inkling. >.>

\-- The whole takoyaki gag comes from me finally getting my dirty, hot little hands on the second movie short [thanks to Shirl ^_^], and if you think I exaggerated for the sake of comedy ... I didn't. ^_^ It's the funniest damn thing since the Suppi ep, and maybe even funnier.

And thanks go to: Amy, Meimi, Catsy, Thea, Sakura, Shi-chan, Tin, Frank, Jae and the rest of the usual suspects. 

  
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Story Index1. Icebreakers2. Jam Tomorrow3. Nanka Shiawase  
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	3. Nanka Shiawase

  
Icebreakers Three: Nanka Shiawase

And yet sometimes, there is a moment where everything slows down into a single clear instant, and you see everything, as if you stood above yourself and watch everything that happens, as if watching a movie or something happening to someone else.

Sometimes, the world shatters and is reborn.

Is it a rebirth? Or just a death?

This moment, with Eriol's eyes laughing up at her and then turning tender and serious -- it was different. So very different.

Sometimes you stand at the edge of a cliff, and can do nothing but stare into the vastness around you, and wish you knew whether to leap or remain safe.

'I do love you, Tomoyo.' And he wouldn't say it unless he meant it, she knew that, and she knew that just bare seconds had passed, and he was still holding her, and she was so very dizzy suddenly. Vertigo surrounded her. Nothing had changed, but nothing was the same. Words must be very powerful things, if five of them could make her hurt like that.

But why was she hurting? People told her they loved her all the time, male and female, shy or confident, directly or indirectly. What made this so different?

The world, she thought, as Eriol let her down and stood looking at her with grave and understanding eyes, was changing. She was changing. For the first time in her life, Tomoyo did a cowardly thing, and even as she did it, she was ashamed of herself.

Tomoyo picked up her skirts and ran. She ran past Sakura-chan and her surprised cry, past Li-kun, whose face changed into understanding even in the brief second she saw it, past her mother and Fujitaka, past Tsukishiro-san and Touya-san and Akizuki-san, and however fast she ran, she couldn't escape the voice that told her that everything was changing.

\---  
Sakura stared after Tomoyo-chan, and her mind thought that she ought to hurry after her, but her feet were rushing toward Eriol-kun.

Eriol-kun looked composed, but Sakura could tell the wrongness in him, as if it were painted in his power signature.

Good, said the cool little voice in the back of her mind. Things are beginning to happen.

Sakura ignored it in favor of Eriol-kun's blank distress. "Eriol-kun, what happened? Tomoyo-chan just ran past us, and she --" Eriol-kun's face cracked for one instant, and then he stuffed the emotion back into wherever he kept it.

"Nothing much," said Eriol-kun, with a smile like bright, broken glass. "I think she's a little tired and wound up from the performance. So am I, actually. I'm going to go home."

"Did something happen to my daughter?" demanded Tomoyo-chan's mother. Sakura was used to her exploding and acting scary that way, but her eyes were narrowed on Eriol-kun and her voice was soft and polite. "Hiiragizawa-kun. What. Happened. To. My. Daughter."

Eriol-kun looked at her and gave her that same brittle smile. "Nothing, Daidouji-san. I told you, she was wound up from performing. It was a pleasure to meet you." He turned around and walked very quietly away.

Sakura thought for a second about following him, or something -- but Akizuki-san was already in motion, scooping a limp Spinel out of Fujitaka's pocket with a careless "Thanks so much for carrying the plushie for me, Professor! See you tomorrow, Touya-kun," and walking unhurriedly away.

Fujitaka exchanged a look with Nadeshiko. Sonomi-kun, for whatever faults she might have had, had always been willing to protect the ones she loved with her life. Hiiragizawa-kun probably didn't deserve to have Sonomi-kun after him. "Performing is hard on the nerves," he said to Sonomi-kun, casually. "Nadeshiko-san used to sleep for hours after an job, remember?"

"Nadeshiko's HOBBY was sleeping, and Tomoyo does not suffer from nerves," said Sonomi-kun, with some spirit. "Kinomoto-sensei, if that young man did anything to my daughter..."

"Hiiragizawa-kun would never mean to hurt anyone," said Fujitaka, with perfect truth. Hiiragizawa-kun never MEANT to hurt people. It was just sometimes an unavoidable side effect of what he had to do, and he was always very sorry about it. And he would no sooner mean to hurt Tomoyo-san than he would Sakura-san.

Sakura-san looked at Li-kun. Li-kun looked at her. Li-kun said, apparently out of nowhere, "I'll call as soon as I can", and trotted unhurriedly off.

Sonomi-kun stared after him.

Fujitaka looked at his daughter. Her eyes had that far-off look again. "Daddy," she said finally, "I think I'll go home now, too. It's been a long day."

"It has been, hasn't it?" said Tsukishiro-kun, on cue. He smiled. "Touya and I will go with Sakura-chan, then."

Which left, Fujitaka thought resignedly, him to deal with an very suspicious Sonomi-kun. He scooped Kero-kun [being a Stuffed Animal as hard as he possibly could] out of his pocket and handed him over to Sakura-san. "There's your plushie," he said.

"See you in a bit, Daddy," said Sakura-san.

Fujitaka watched them off and then tried a placid smile on Sonomi-kun.

Her foot began a tap that he remembered too well from earlier days.

"Kinomoto-sensei," she said. Her amber eyes were bright with irritation.

::Sonomi-chan is always prettier when she's angry,:: said Nadeshiko-san proudly. Fujitaka managed to pull himself together before he choked. Nadeshiko-san smiled sweetly at him. ::You don't think so?::

Fujitaka shot her a look that promised repayment later and somehow managed to look blandly at Sonomi-kun. "Yes, Sonomi-kun?"

"I feel like there's something going on that I don't know about." Tap. Tap. Tap. "I dislike feeling that there's something going on that I don't know about, Kinomoto-sensei." Tap tap. Tap tap. Tap tap. "Especially when it concerns my only child." Taptaptap.

"I don't know all of it, myself," said Fujitaka, with perfect truth.

Tap tap tap TAPTAPTAPTAP. "You know more than I do," said Sonomi-kun.

::Just like a sweet little spitting tabby kitten,:: said Nadeshiko-san, dreamily. ::Facing off with a puzzled Golden Retriever...::

By some miracle Fujitaka did not fall over, choke, or laugh uncontrollably. His voice was a little unsteady, though. "W-Why don't we go get some coffee and I'll try to explain?"

\-----

Nakuru could feel Eriol ahead of them. Usually she couldn't track him beyond a feeling in the back of her mind, solid and reassuring, that he was There, the way humans had the reassurance of gravity. Right now he was radiating distress, 'loudly' enough that she could sense the change in the currents of magic around her.

"Good job he isn't the most powerful anymore," said Suppi without moving his lips.

"No kidding." Emotions, especially emotions of a very powerful and agitated sorcerer, could have ... physical effects. Eriol was always very careful about controlling his emotions, but something as strong as this might slip away accidentally. Nakuru still remembered the side effects of Eriol's break-up with Kaho, which had been rather nasty even if Eriol was only at half his original power. Neither Nakuru nor Suppi had enjoyed it, to say the least of it; teapots were supposed to produce tea, not tears or sludge.

"I can smell him," said Suppi. "Upset. Frightened, a little. Confused. Sad. Sorry." His nose wrinkled a little.

Nakuru nodded. They were close enough to their Master now that she was picking up the traces of his presence, a confused, brightly colored nimbus, with red streaking through the normal ultra-violet that was Eriol. Grey, too, a dull, yellowy tone.

Eriol was ahead of them now, and Nakuru picked up her pace, just a little. "Eriol!" she called, "Eriol, hey, wait!"

Eriol stopped. His shoulders were set, very carefully, and Nakuru prepared to fulfill her duty as his Guardian and companion.

"You made a grade-A idiot of yourself, didn't you?" she said.

Eriol glared at her.

"Oho," said Suppi, "First class all the way?"

Eriol glared at HIM, too. Neither of them cared. Eriol could not be jollied up, nor did he want to be. The most you could do with him was distract him from what troubled him and hope that he would regain a little sense. When the Kaho Thing had begun its long, slow, dive south, they were the ones who pointed out he could bail or be sunk. They had stood by him. They had prodded him into recovering. They had taken care of him.

They couldn't do anything about what Tomoyo thought of their master, and that, Nakuru thought privately, was the most frustrating part of the business. Doubtless Cerberus and Yue had felt the same way -- well, she amended, Yue was Special that way. The thought of Clow falling in love had probably given him hives. And then he felt worse because he had no clue why he had the hives. [The fact that Nakuru felt rather sorry for, and was the only person who could say with truth that she knew where Yue was coming from, did not change her opinion that what Yue really needed was a jolly good smack alongside the head.] But short of finding Tomoyo-chan directly and shaking her until she agreed to love Eriol, there was nothing Nakuru and Suppi could do.

"I did not make a first class grade-A idiot of myself," said Eriol sulkily. "I was a complete and utter fool."

"That's not quite as bad, right?" said Nakuru, brightly.

"No, it's worse," snapped Eriol. "I kissed her."

If he expected shock and surprise, he was disappointed.

\-----  
Tomoyo closed the door behind her and sat down at a desk, feeling as if she had run a thousand miles in deep sand. She hated this feeling, like she was helpless to do anything but respond, not cause. Someone had got to her so badly that she ran away from him and hid in an empty classroom. She could just smack him.

Well, she thought, maybe she wouldn't smack him. But the thought was oddly comforting. She should have slapped him when he kissed her, instead of staring down at him like a brainless twit, dazzled by the look in his eyes.

What had he done to her?

Some scrap of honesty reminded her that Eriol hadn't really done anything to her at all. Except kiss her, and if she had a hundred yen for every time someone had tried THAT, she could buy her own mansion. She felt, though, however wrong, and however obscurely, that it was somehow his fault for looking at her like THAT and making her feel something that should have only been caused by --

That should only been caused by Sakura-chan.

That was the problem, wasn't it? Tomoyo knew she would have to think this through, but her head hurt. She was responding to Eriol the same way she responded to Sakura-chan, only she wasn't. Because she had never responded the same way to anybody as she did to Sakura-chan, and even with that, Eriol brought something out in her that Sakura-chan did not.

But she felt something for Sakura-chan that she had never felt for anyone else. Something special. Something different. Something unique and lovely and ... Sakura-chan.

The problem was that Eriol made her feel something equally unique. Not the sweet yearning that Sakura-chan brought, the desire to admire -- worship, perhaps -- her, to watch her day by day and see each newness of every new day. Something else. Something that made her feel alive in a different way than Sakura-chan did.

Some thought, something that would give her the whole key to the matter, hovered distractingly at the edge of her mind. Some word, that would make everything clear, was lying just beyond her reach.

There was a slight, embarrassed cough, as if someone hoped they could make their presence known without actually disturbing her if she didn't want to be disturbed. Tomoyo turned and saw Li-kun looming in the doorway. From being one of the shortest boys in the class, he had somehow managed to shoot up to being one of the tallest. He was only shorter than Hiiragizawa-kun and Yamazaki-kun, come to think of it, but Yamazaki-kun lacked the grace that Hiiragizawa-kun and Li-kun, lanky as he was, possessed.

Tomoyo realized that she had just called Hiiragizawa-kun 'tall and graceful', and felt the intense urge to beat herself over the head with something.

"You ok?" Li-kun's eyes were fixed somewhere just beyond Tomoyo, in the way that meant he wasn't quite comfortable but meant to do his duty if it killed him.

Tomoyo thought about this for a second. "Not really," she said. She never bothered with polite fictions with Li-kun. He was her ally, and in some ways, closer to her than even Sakura-chan. He loved Sakura-chan as much as she did. It had always seemed a little absurd to try to keep him at a polite distance. Better that she know him well, and he know her, so they could always be with Sakura-chan.

Li-kun cleared his throat. "I thought I'd ask if you wanted to have some tea or something." Tomoyo's confusion must have shown, because Li-kun went a dull shade of red. "For returns."

'For returns' ... and then she understood. She'd been right, that long ago time, when she looked at him and seen beneath the scowl the young boy had worn to the kind heart beneath.

She managed a smile and rose. "I'd like that, thank you."

\-------

"Are you going to do anything?" asked Touya. He was walking a little slower than he would if he was just walking with Yuki -- Sakura had managed to gain an inch or three of height over the years, but she still stood below his shoulder, and if Touya walked at his normal pace, she had to half-trot to keep up.

Sakura shrugged. Her face was a little too composed, as if she was thinking hard but didn't want to be pressed for her thoughts.

"There's not a lot you can do, huh," said Yukito, watching her.

"I'm not eleven, Yukito-san," said Sakura, with surprising primness. "And you're right, you know. There's not a lot I can do."

Touya watched her from the corner of his eye. She seemed calm enough, but still... "Well?"

"'Well', what, Oniichan?"

Touya tried to think of a good way to say it, but failed. "What do you think of... all this?" Sakura had always been blissfully oblivious to most of the emotional undercurrents surrounding her. His mother had done it, too. It was as if they floated happily on the currents, buoyed by their unquenchable optimism.

"I think," said Sakura, looking suddenly like her mother, and even more, oddly enough, like Eriol, "That things are going to turn out all right. No matter what happens."

Touya wished he could be so confident.

\-------

"Eriol?" said Nakuru. "You've been working up to kissing her since you were eleven years old."

"I have not," said Eriol, stung.

"Yes, you have," said Spinel, relentless. "But you didn't want to admit it."

Eriol considered this for a second. He had a nasty feeling that Spinel and Nakuru were right, as usual. "I didn't want to kiss her when we were eleven," he said sulkily. "I was in love with Kaho."

"And now you're not," said Nakuru. "And I seem to remember one of us here lighting up like a Christmas tree every time 'Daidouji-san' wrote us."

"Shut up," said Eriol.

"And she never wrote Ruby Moon or me," added Spinel.

"You, too." Eriol tried to look angry but he knew he mostly looked like someone had taken his toy away. "She ran away from me."

Nakuru looked at Spinel.

Spinel looked at Nakuru.

"Suppi and I," said Nakuru, majestically, "Are going home. We suggest you either come with us and act like a civilized human being, or go sulk elsewhere. Possibly in front of her house, where you may find it comforting to sing bad Italian arias about unrequited love and then get taken to the funny farm. Where we will come to throw you peanuts. Or you may find a vending machine and get drunk. We do not care at present."

"But we refuse," said Spinel, looking equally as regal, "to stand here and listen to you blither over Tomoyo. Do feel free to come home when you have regained a gram of sense."

"I'll be sure not to come back until I'm a human again," said Eriol. Whatever irony he intended was ignored, and Nakuru stalked off with her nose in the air, looking both slightly absurd and terribly dignified. Spinel, in her arms, somehow managed to look even more dignified, as if he were a small god being carried in the arms of a devoted priestess. Even in the middle of his irritation and resentment, Eriol felt a wave of affection for them. As he had told Kaho so very long ago now, he had gotten used to them.

\--

Tomoyo stared down at the cheerfully smiling face engraved on the table. The Piffle Princess mascot lived in an unchanging world, filled with blue skies and cute things, not the constantly shifting world of reality. Tomoyo looked away from the idiot smile on the table.

"I got you cocoa," said Li-kun's rumble, above her. "Because all they had for tea was English Breakfast and Earl Grey."

And Li-kun, thoughtful as always, had thought she might not wish to drink something that could remind her of her...problem.

Gray eyes smiling up at her, so happy, for just a moment. A beautiful voice shattering her world to bits...

"You could try banging your head against the table," suggested Li-kun. "Dunno why, but it always helped me."

Tomoyo tried it. It did help -- at least, the pain distracted her.

Li-kun set her cup down in front of her and sat down. He'd apparently gotten a mocha for himself, with chocolate shavings on top. "And besides, chocolate is always comforting."

Tomoyo dredged up a smile. "You like chocolate a lot, don't you? Sakura-chan was telling me about learning a new recipe for you. Fudge cake, she said."

Li-kun's face flushed slightly. "It was good cake," he said, smiling a little. "Her father helped her, and then Cerberus ate all of it, and she had to make a new one."

Tomoyo could see it as clearly as if she had been there -- Sakura-chan, flushed with pride and the heat of the oven, her father smiling proudly at her, and then Kero-chan descending like a very small vulture and Sakura-chan's helpless rage. Her smile found more strength.

Li-kun fixed her with one of his bright amber stares. "If you don't want to talk about it, we can just sit here. But if you do, I'll listen."

Tomoyo considered this for a second. "Can we just sit for a while?"

"Of course we can," he said, gruffly.

And they did. Tomoyo worked slowly through her cocoa, and somehow, she wasn't surprised when Li-kun quietly rose and quietly returned with more cocoa and some sweets.

And then somehow she found herself talking. She told him about the first time she'd ever met Sakura-chan; those emerald eyes so bright and open and eager, the way she hadn't even seemed to be aware of Tomoyo's status. She told him about Sakura-chan's carelessly generous gift of a bunny eraser, and how she'd felt like someone had given her a diamond.

She told him about the way Sakura-chan had chattered on about her father, her mean brother, her brother's new friend and how sweet and handsome he was. She told him about realizing how much she loved Sakura-chan, about listening to Sakura's artless infatuation with Yukito, and knowing it was just an infatuation, knowing that perhaps someday she could win Sakura-chan's heart for her own.

She told him about finding out about Sakura-chan's magic, and the pain of knowing she could never really share completely in it; how she had become determined to share in it and help her in the only ways she could, of the prayers put into every stitch of the costumes she made, of her foolish belief that, perhaps, wearing them protected Sakura-chan, just a little, if love put into clothing could be a defense.

She even told him of the bittersweet moment when she realized that he would have her dear one, and how the pain of watching her grow apart from her had become one with the sweetness of watching her blossom. How it had hurt, even as she was glad, when she found out that Sakura-chan had gone to him instead of her with her broken heart. She spoke, as she had never expected to do, of the terrible temptation to not call Sakura-chan when she found out he was leaving, knowing that if she didn't, she could have Sakura. Of the strange, bittersweet relief after she had called, and Sakura-chan had thanked her.

And when the tears at last came, he handed her his handkerchief and let her weep.

When she looked up again, Li-kun was standing over her with a cold glass of water in his hand. "Crying makes you thirsty," he said, with something that wasn't quite a smile.

She _was_ thirsty, she discovered. And liable to choke up again at his kindness. "Thank you," she said. The cold water soothed her aching throat, and when he dipped a napkin in his own water and passed it to her, her hot face. "I've never been able to cry prettily." (I'm sorry, Li-kun.)

"You've never had enough practice." (It's all right.) "My sisters, they can drown the house when they get going." (I'm glad you trust me enough.)

Tomoyo smiled obediently. "I forget those sisters of yours." Her eyes felt full of ground-in sand and dirt, and the napkin was already warm. She dipped it in her own glass and pressed it to them. "I hate crying. It makes me feel helpless."

Li-kun took this seriously. "You're one of the least helpless people I know."

Tomoyo blinked at him and then managed a watery smile. "Thank you, Li-kun."

\-----

Sonomi-kun stared at Fujitaka. He felt it like a physical presence, boring into him. "What was that all about, Kinomoto-sensei?" she asked, almost pleasantly. She swirled a spoon into her iced coffee. It clinked slowly.

Fujitaka remained unaffected. Sonomi-kun had such a strong will that she didn't even really think about bending people to it. It just sort of happened. Fujitaka, fortunately, was immune to it, and met her eyes calmly. "Well, you know how it is with kids these days," he said, one eye on Nadeshiko-san, who was leaning on Sonomi-kun, of course. Sonomi-kun was possibly the only person Fujitaka knew who was less sensitive than he was -- or had been. She didn't even notice when Nadeshiko-san patted her hair affectionately, although some of the military tension left her shoulders. "Never tell us anything."

Sonomi-kun gave him precisely the look the remark deserved.

He sighed and tried to arrange it all in words, like the way he looked at a site and then explained how he knew where things were. It was less hard now that he was experienced and respected enough so people thought it was merely the fact that he had been on so many digs -- in his younger years of teaching, explaining that he knew that such and such would be there because it _was_ there, with no conscious reasoning behind it, had been a minor misery. "It's rather a mess to explain," he said.

The first layer, of course, was the way Hiiragizawa-kun felt for Sakura-san. "Hiiragizawa-kun met Sakura-san the first time he came to Japan, and I suppose he --" Fujitaka boggled for an instant. Well, Sonomi-kun, he imagined himself saying, Hiiragizawa-kun believed that he was half the reincarnation of a powerful sorcerer, and that Sakura-san was supposed to be his Heir and free him from his power. And he believes that I was the other half of that sorcerer, so he feels paternal toward my daughter. Like an uncle or something. In fact, Hiiragizawa-kun and I are kind of twins, except instead of being from the same egg we were from the same soul and I'm technically 30 years older than him, except really, he's about 50 years older than I am. "He was, er, interested in her from the first, so..."

"He was in love with Sakura-chan?" demanded Sonomi-kun.

Nadeshiko-san made a noise that, in any other person in the world, would have been a snort of laughter.

"Not really?" said Fujitaka, helplessly. "I think he was interested in someone else, actually." And he was in love with my son's previous lover, whom he met in England. Except something happened and he came back here looking as if someone had cut his heart out with a dull spoon. But he couldn't say that to Sonomi-kun, either. "Hiiragizawa-kun is, er, he has rather a paternal personality." Which was, he comforted himself, nearly completely true.

"If he has such a paternal personality," said Sonomi-kun, her expression suggesting that firstly, she didn't believe it, and secondly, she didn't trust it, "Why did he frighten my daughter enough to make her run away?"

::I don't think Hiiragizawa-kun meant to frighten her,:: said Nadeshiko-san mildly.

Fujitaka gave her a Look.

::Darling,:: she said patiently, ::if he is anything like you, the last thing on his mind was 'frightening' her. The poor boy probably scared himself more than he upset her.::

Fujitaka, who still remembered the horror he felt when he'd half-accidentally kissed Nadeshiko-san for the first time and managed to convince himself that she was going to a) shatter, b) scream, or c) look at him like he was some sort of vile monster masquerading as a teacher [in point of fact she blinked twice, stared at him for a long, thoughtful second and then kissed him herself, which was, she observed with her usual maddening complacency afterwards, much better because Kinomoto-sensei was in such shock that she managed to kiss him for quite a long time], was forced to concede that point. "I don't think Hiiragizawa-kun meant to frighten Tomoyo-san," he said. "I think..." He hesitated.

The next layer, he thought, was trying to explain what had gone into Hiiragizawa-kun's making -- even if he had been born and raised in something approaching normality, yet still he carried so much of what he and Fujitaka had once been. Much more than Fujitaka did, even after the division of Clow's power.

Fujitaka's memories of the time before he met Nadeshiko-san were blurred. He had a half-suspicion that they were like Tsukishiro-kun's memories, only perhaps better cemented than the ones that Tsukishiro-kun had been given. Perhaps it was only that Nadeshiko-san had been the first one he had cared to remember. But had he been as powerful as Clow had been said to be, and had he been dividing his soul into two, and had he known what his next life would be like, he might have been sorely tempted to arrange reality so that he could go directly to the one he meant to meet. Especially if Hiiragizawa-kun's comments on their past life [when he even mentioned it] were true.

And Hiiragizawa-kun hadn't had the luxury of going straight to meet the one he was meant to meet, but had lived for many years alone, and then with his Guardians, who, as much as Hiiragizawa undoubtedly loved them, were not quite the same. And then the one he had waited so long for had left him. Or he had left her. And now he was changing again, becoming something new, something more human and more human yet again, and it must frighten him, thought Fujitaka, it must frighten him terribly.

"Hiiragizawa-kun," he said finally, aware of Sonomi-kun staring at him, "Had a very strange upbringing. And it catches up to him sometimes. He ... he doesn't feel like --" He stopped again.

"Is he in love with my daughter?" asked Sonomi-kun.

"I think so," said Fujitaka. "As far as I can tell. And as far as he can, he would never hurt Tomoyo-san, not for anything in the world."

Sonomi-kun suddenly looked old, just for an instant. "And she's in love with him, do you think?"

Fujitaka could only shrug.

\------

Eriol dragged himself over to Sakura-san's house. He regretted it almost instantly.

Sakura-san put her hands on her hips. "Eriol-kun," she said, severely, "You knew better than that."

Eriol tried looking small and harmless. "It seemed a good idea at the time."

Sakura-san narrowed her eyes rather adorably at him. "You thought first?"

Eriol looked away. "No." There was a dangerous silence, which, absurdly, he felt the need to fill. "It was just that she... and then I thought... and she was so ... and I didn't mean to..."

Sakura-san's eyes narrowed further.

"Hello, Suppi?" said Cerberus, loudly, into his cell. "What the hell did you mean, sending him over here? Yue and I had to put UP with Clow, you know. We couldn't pack him off to other people so they could deal with him. We had to deal with him OURSELVES. Alone. Even after the Painting Incident."

"The painting incident," repeated Touya from the hallway.

"It was a simple mistake," said Eriol. That was, if he was remembering the same thing Cerberus was. It wasn't Clow's fault.

"I just don't think it's FAIR," said Cerberus, to Spinel and at Eriol, "WE never had the option of sending him off to Sakura-san. All WE could do was live through it. WE never booted him out and ate cookies and tea while someone else listened to him. WE couldn't."

"Cerberus," said Eriol, calmly, "If you don't shut up I'm going to find out if I can still do ice spells."

"Oops, gotta go," said Cerberus. "He's making irrational threats. Not that you would know about that part, of course. Bai."

\------

They adjourned to Li-kun's apartment, because, said Li-kun, Tomoyo needed something to eat, and, thought Tomoyo, if they were seen having dinner together, the rumor mill was going to grind into high gear.

Li-kun called Sakura-chan as soon as they got there. "Sakura? It's me -- Yes, I have. She's here. No, I took her for some cocoa --" he cleared his throat "-- and we talked." A pause. "If he's there, tell him to scre--" He held the phone away from his ear. "I won't be rude, promise. Yes, she's fine. Tired, though. Yes, I'm going to feed her. Restrain him, would you? I'm not going to talk to him." A wordless howl of protest from the phone, and what sounded like Sakura-chan calling Shield out. "Yes, I'll send her home, as soon as we eat. Mm-hmm. Yes, I know." A crash on the other side of the phone. "...I'm going to assume I didn't hear Cerberus returning to his true form and sitting on him. I did. Tell him I'll buy him a candy bar. All right. I love you, sweetheart. See you tomorrow. Bye." He hung up.

Tomoyo said, in a small voice, "He was over there?"

Li-kun gave her a Look. "Of course he was over there. If for no other reason than Spinel and Ruby Moon probably got sick of him and kicked him out of his own house." He turned toward the kitchen. "What do you want to eat?"

\---

And then Xiao Lang had called, and he'd heard that Tomoyo was safe with him, and all he wanted to do was have one little word with him, and Sakura-san had called Shield out and Cerberus -- his OWN CREATION -- had transformed, and now Eriol was pinned beneath several hundred pounds of golden-furred muscle, and Cerberus's claws were out and uncomfortably near Eriol's throat.

Sakura-san listened to Xiao Lang. "All right, Syaoran-kun. I'll tell him. Make her something salty, ok? Love you, too. Bye."

She turned and smiled sweetly at Eriol and Cerberus. "Syaoran-kun says he's going to buy Kero-chan a candy bar."

Cerberus chuckled. Eriol growled.

"Should I let him up now, O my Mistress?" inquired Cerberus, gleefully.

Eriol made a suggestion. Sakura walked over and stamped on his foot. Eriol howled in pain. "Don't use such language, Eriol-kun," she said severely.

Yukito wandered in, blinked a time or two, and was suddenly Yue. "What did he do this time?" he inquired, looking bored.

"Lots," said Cerberus, with what Eriol was forced to call entirely too much relish. "Lots and lots. More lots than the time with that water mage."

Yue raised one perfectly curved silver eyebrow. "That would take something."

Sakura's eyebrows shot up. "I don't want to know about 'more lots than the time with that water mage', do I?"

"Nope," said Cerberus, graciously allowing Eriol to get up. "You don't want to know at all."

"That was not Clow's fault," said Eriol, stung into defending his past life. "She started it."

"Clow finished it, didn't he? And it turned my tail white, too, look." Said tail was waved around for inspection. "My poooooor goldennn taaaaaaaiill. All white now. Because of Clow."

"You were BORN with a white tail," growled Eriol, dusting himself off.

"It was CREAM before," said Cerberus. "And now it's white."

"Who cares about your damn tail," snapped Eriol. He'd made Tomoyo upset and Tomoyo was never going to speak to him or fight with him or boss him around ever again, and she was just going to be palely polite forever and ever, and it was all his fault. And now everybody was acting like it was vaguely funny, and just what he deserved. And what was worse was the nagging feeling that it was both those things, hidden beneath these new feelings of hurt and fear and confusion and not-knowing-what-to-do. He sat down on the floor again, suddenly, and banged his head against his knees. It didn't help.

A small hand rested against his head and stroked his hair. Eriol felt nominally better. "I've made a right muck of things, haven't I, Sakura-san?" he said, muffledly.

"Yes, Eriol-kun," said Sakura-san.

\--

He felt vaguely on trial, a feeling heightened by the fact that Sakura-san was curled up in the armchair in the living room, with Cerberus sprawled on the floor and playing footrest to Sakura, and Yue kneeling beside her on the floor, wearing an oddly smug expression.

Also, the fact that he was sitting beside a pillow printed with a racoon, a frog, and a small yellow duckling bathing in a tin tub did not help. Eriol decided he hated Sanrio and all their works. Obviously they were part of some global conspiracy to dull the populace's brains with sheer, horrifying cuteness. And then Hello Kitty would rise up and take over the world. But nobody would care, because their brains were dulled by the constant barrage of angry penguins and bouncing puppies and burnt buns. Everybody would be forced to cheer up, whether they wanted to or not.

"I didn't mean to," he offered finally.

Sakura-san, his dear Sakura-san, the one he had worked and waited for so long for, the girl who was perhaps the closest and only thing he would have to a daughter, snorted. Eriol tried to feel offended, and somehow failed.

"What didn't you mean to do?" asked Sakura-san. She looked exactly like the woman who had been Eriol's nanny, very long ago, although even Eriol wasn't sure if she had been real or a construct made so Eriol could talk convincingly of his past. That woman, motherly as she had been, had always made Eriol feel like she could look into his mind and pull out anything that wasn't perfectly in order, and look at it as if it were something small and grimy that lived in mud, before marching out with it held between two fingers to return it to its native dirt.

"Say anything," said Eriol. "I wasn't going to say anything at all."

Yue lifted his upper lip, like he smelt something bad but didn't quite like to mention it.

Sakura looked down at him, and then at Kero. "Why don't you two see if Oniichan's making tea or not," she said. It wasn't quite a suggestion, even if it wasn't an order. Kero-chan opened his mouth to object, and Sakura stared hard at him. Kero-chan recognized it for what it was, and heaved himself to his feet.

"I bet Niichan's sitting in there shoving cookies down his throat," he said, darkly. "Come on, Yue."

Yue-san looked at Sakura for a single moment more and then raised himself up in one fluid motion, and followed Kero-chan out the door. Sakura watched them out the door -- she wasn't going to suspect them of actually eavesdropping, of course, but they might find it tempting to listen quietly nearby -- and then looked back at Eriol-kun, who looked, she thought, exactly like a puppy that had been scolded for doing something Bad in the hallway, and was trying to figure out how to make things better.

"Why didn't you mean to say anything?" Sakura knew that people thought of her as rather cutely naive. [Although how you were supposed to be cutely naive after being mistress of the sort of powerful magic that most mages would give their eyeteeth for, going through the associated troubles to master them, and dealing with people who weren't best pleased with the idea, was never quite explained.] She let them think it; it was easier that way. And perhaps she was naive, she didn't know.

"Because," said Eriol-kun. "She loves someone else."

Sakura considered this for a moment. "You mean you didn't want to say anything because she's in love with me."

Eriol-kun gaped at her in some apparent horror. "Sakura-san," he said, finally, or rather, croaked, "When did you..."

Sakura shrugged. "I had a good idea when you came here for the first time. But I didn't think about it much until you started teaching me to read auras, and then it was fairly blindingly obvious." What she didn't say that it had always been even more obvious that Tomoyo-chan did not want her to ask about the person she loved, except perhaps in the most general terms. Over the years it had become clearer and clearer, but Sakura knew that Tomoyo-chan thought that if Sakura knew the way Tomoyo-chan felt, Sakura would not like it, or become confused. Sakura was never quite sure if this was a compliment or some sort of vague insult, but in either case, Tomoyo-chan might have a point.

And there was no delicate way to tell Tomoyo-chan that she knew that Tomoyo-chan had been in love with her since they met in third grade, and she wished that she could do something about it. But there was nothing to be done but what she did -- tactfully ignore it until it came up on its own. It never had, and Tomoyo-chan had continued to love her, and Sakura had continued to love her as her dear friend and almost-sister, and to quietly accept Tomoyo-chan's love for her.

Because love was a gift, and it was terribly rude not to accept it as freely as it was given.

Sakura looked at Eriol-kun again, and sighed. There wasn't really a point in scolding Eriol-kun. He did an amazingly good job of it himself. She got up and went over to him. "Eriol-kun," she said, gently. She put her hands around his face and tipped it to meet her eyes. It was something she had a dim memory of her mother doing, very long ago. "Everything will be all right."

He tried to look away, or say something depressing and silly about that only being for her, and Sakura shook his head, very gently. "It _will_ be all right," she repeated. It was important, even though she didn't know why, that he should know this. "No matter what happens. I promise you."

Eriol-kun's dark eyes met hers for a minute more, sad, and older than they should be -- older and sadder than anybody's eyes should ever be. One eyebrow went up quizzically, and he relaxed, just a little. "Yes, Sakura-san," he said, obediently.

Sakura pulled him to his feet and gave him a quick, hard hug. His arms came around her and returned it, a little desperately, for one second, and then he let her go.

"Now," she said, looking as severe as she possibly could, "Go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow will be better."

"Yes, Sakura-san."

"And stop being meek. It scares me."

"Yes, Sakura-san."

\------

Li-kun had fed her 'proper' Chinese food and innumerable cups of jasmine tea, which his family sent to him from Hong Kong, from thin porcelain cups, painted with peonies that shone through the other side like animate shadows, and talked to her about everything but the concert. Afterward, he had courteously offered to walk her home, and even more courteously understood when she said that she would much prefer to be alone for a while, thank you.

The night sky was so clear she could pick out even the dimmer constellations. You could almost see the couching between the stars, as if it were a piece of fabric beaded in crystal, with the lines between them laid down in faintly shining silver thread.

When she was younger, she hadn't liked the lonely feeling stars gave her sometimes, as if she wanted to follow after them, but was simply too earthbound to even trail behind them. That loneliness, she had learned, was just part of what stars were. They didn't mean it, and couldn't change their nature, even if they wanted to, and she could not change herself. Better to accept it, and learn to love even that loneliness.

Darkness had never made her lonely, or frightened. Dark was simply there, wrapped around her, and in it she saw the stars most clearly.

Eriol was of Dark, and Sakura-chan of the Stars. She didn't want to think about that, not now, not with her mind still confused. She pulled her mind away from it, and thought of fabric. Fabric she could control. Fabric she could make into something lovely and unique and special, something that would last. She had a piece of fabric at home, a black silk. It wasn't exactly black, though, like night was never exactly dark. The shop called it Black Opal. The saleslady had waxed poetic over the sheen, the gloss, the way that it reflected navy and blood-red and dark green and silver back at the light. Tomoyo had seen a vision of Sakura-chan's pale skin rising above the dark fabric, but she had never used it. Something had always stopped her, a lack of a design that would do justice to the fabric, perhaps.

She would use that fabric tonight, she thought, and sew until her mind was clear again.

Her mother was lurking, rather badly, in the hallway. Tomoyo blinked at her. "Is something wrong?" Her voice sounded surprisingly normal, even to herself.

Her mother hesitated -- a rarity -- and nearly cleared her throat before she caught herself. "Are you all right?"

Tomoyo considered this seriously. "I think so." She managed a smile. "I'm sorry for worrying you, Mother."

"Bah," said her mother, more normally. "I'm supposed to worry. I gave birth to you."

Tomoyo found herself really smiling again. It seemed to have gotten so rare, these last few infinitely long hours, that she thought she might start a diary of every time she smiled. 'Mother was mother. Couldn't help cheering up.' "Thank you," she said, "but I'm fine."

"Bah," said her mother again. She stopped and then burst out, "Did he hurt you? Or upset you? I'm going to kill him if he did, baby, don't worry."

Her mother was really worried and upset, and really ready to kill Eriol. Laughing would be terribly inappropriate. "I'm fine, Mother," she said. "You don't have to worry about me."

Her mother looked at her sideways. "Really?"

Tomoyo nodded.

"Well, if he DID hurt you," said her mother, baring expensively kept and exquisitely whitened fangs, "you tell me, baby, and I'll take care of him."

Tomoyo made some reply and fled to her own room. She leaned against the door and sighed. It was good to be alone, without any need to keep up her mask. The message light was flashing on the answering machine, but she was more than certain it would be either Sakura-chan demanding to know if she was all right, or Eriol to apologize. However much propriety demanded she allow him to do it, or let Sakura-chan know she was not floating, like the Lady of Shallot, down a river with her hair spread dramatically and damply around her, she simply could not face listening to the messages and calling them back.

The first thing was to get out of the dress, which she hoped she never had to look at again. She'd been proud of it before ... everything ... had happened, but now she would be just as glad never to see it again. She pulled a shirt and skirt out of her closet and kicked the dress and the shoes she had worn into a far corner. Where they could stay, forever.

She went to her work area, and lifted down the black silk. Even in the artificial light of the room, it shone. Tomoyo shook it out, watching the way it billowed and settled softly, like a shadow, onto the table, and picked up her scissors.

Snick-snick. Snick-snick. The scissors seemed to move on their own, blindly following some invisible pattern. As if every move they made was inevitable, but of their own desire. They swept through the iridescent gleam of black, and even in the state Tomoyo was in, she saw and approved of the way the fabric fell divided from the scissors, how the fabric slid down with a soft silken whoosh to puddle on the table.

Her hands were somehow apart from herself, moving surely on the fabric, cutting out the major pieces of the fabric quickly and without haste. She wondered if she would regret not cutting a muslin mock-up first, but she just wanted to make something without thinking about it, without thinking at all. It wouldn't matter if she had to throw it away afterward.

She threaded a needle of contrasting thread -- when basting, the point was to make sure that the stitches were easily seen to take out -- and it flashed in and of the fabric like a little silver fish in a sea of darkness. The fabric was so beautiful, she thought. Perhaps she would feel sorry for using it for an experiment later, but right now she was in the curiously distant place that she always went to when she sewed. She had done this before. She began work on something with another problem on her mind, and told herself that when she got done with the project she would know what to do about the problem.

It was always something like magic, the way that a flat sheet of cloth, however beautiful, submitted to being torn apart by scissors, and then pierced by needles and pins, and finally was reborn as something that would slip over someone's head or around someone's shoulders, and drape and mold to someone's living body and become almost alive itself. It was always something like a miracle how the cloth became so much more lovely when you made something of it.

Tomoyo wondered if the cloth minded being cut, minded being sewn together. Did it shrink away from being recreated? Or did it welcome it?

But it was too late, even if the cloth had wanted to remain how it was. The basting was finished. The cloth lay perfectly even and waiting to be run through the machine. Now to thread the machine with black silk, like a strand of night going through the needle. Later, perhaps, she would take off the foot she used now, and put on the embroidery foot -- less romantic, perhaps, than stitching it by hand, but faster, easier.

When she surfaced, the sun was rising, and curious rays were poking at her curtains, wondering why they were still closed. She stretched and looked down at the fabric. She should lie down soon. She was tired, but wide awake.

Perhaps she would just finish off the sleeves.

The next time she looked up, the clock said it was nearly eleven AM. She blinked at it, disbelieving, and then stretched and rubbed her eyes. The fabric was recognizable now as a jacket, not a pile of odd shaped --

Jacket?

Wasn't she making a dress for Sakura-chan?

She stepped back and looked at the fabric carefully. It was something for Sakura-chan. It was meant to be something for Sakura-chan. She had gone to her fabric and scissors and sewing machine meaning to make something for Sakura-chan.

And if Sakura-chan grew seven inches, got about five inches wider across the shoulders and narrower around the hips, and wore black, it might actually look rather good on her.

Tomoyo tried to decide if she wanted to laugh, cry or simply scream, and settled for saying several words Touya-san tried not to use around Sakura-chan. She took hold of two seams, ready to reduce it to scrap fabric -- and hesitated. Maybe she could alter it to fit Sakura-chan's brother. It was about the right size, after all. Even Li-kun might look well in it. And -- her hand rubbed the fabric, just a little -- it was such good fabric, and she didn't know if it would stand being cut up for scrap. Maybe she could finish it later. She'd never done much male clothing, after all. It would be a terrible waste of the cloth. It had taken her so long to find it, and now that she had actually cut it and sewn it, just to toss the entire thing... and there was the silks, too. Tomoyo looked at the box of embroidery thread, horribly tempted. She'd bought the floss to match the fabric, and she knew just how she would do it. Chinese designs, a dragon twining up the body of the jacket, perhaps, with jeweled-eyed head to rest on the wearer's shoulder, as if it was some sorcerer's pet frozen in time... but subtly colored, in shades that nearly matched the fabric, so you had to look at it closely to see it.

It wouldn't be much harm, would it? pleaded the part of her mind that was always occupied with fabric and thread and the way fabrics draped and shone and the personalities of cotton and silk and linen. Just do it to display. To see if you can. It would be so lovely.

And she could use frogs for the fastenings, of heavy dark-indigo satin cord, and perhaps put tassels on them, or on the back of the neck, under an especially elaborate silken cord knot. A Chinese collar, of course, and perhaps ... Tomoyo caught herself. This time she managed to laugh, although even to her own ears it sounded more like a sob.

But she couldn't take it apart. She wanted to, but she couldn't make herself do it.

What an idiot she was. Tomoyo glared at the innocent fabric as if it had done something to her personally. It just lay there, a mute and beautiful thing. Waiting.

There was a soft knock on the door. "Ojousama." The maid's voice was slightly muffled by the door.

Tomoyo looked toward the door. "Yes?"

"Sakura Kinomoto is here to visit you."

"Sakura-chan?" repeated Tomoyo.

"Yes, Ojousama. Shall I bring her up?"

Tomoyo stared blankly at the wall for a second, and then she found herself balling up the half-finished jacket and shoving it into her sewing basket. "I'll be down in a moment, thank you."

\--

Kero-chan had offered to come with Sakura when she went to Tomoyo-chan's house, but didn't press the point when she refused. She rather thought he knew, like her, that whatever needed to be done with Tomoyo-chan was best done alone. Whatever that was. Sakura spent the entire bus trip wondering what she was going to say to Tomoyo-chan. Anything she could think of just seemed wrong.

"Sakura-chan," said Tomoyo-chan, from the stairs. She had purple smudges under her eyes, and her skin looked transparent, even though her cheeks were red. "I wasn't expecting you..."

Sakura could read symptoms of exhaustion, if nothing else. Tomoyo-chan looked like she was about to blow away into the wind. "Tomoyo-chan," said Sakura. "Did you even lie down last night?"

Tomoyo-chan looked a little guilty. Sakura shook her head, and said, firmly, "Let's go back to your room and sit down, at least."

In Tomoyo-chan's room, Sakura pushed her into a chair and sat down. "Are you all right?" Which was a silly thing to say, but expected. Tomoyo-chan looked as if she needed to hear expected things.

"Perfectly fine," said Tomoyo-chan, smiling. The smile didn't really fool Sakura, but she let it pass. "I'm sorry for yesterday, Sakura-chan. I was --"

Sakura's eyebrow shot up.

Tomoyo-chan blinked at her for a second, and then recovered. "--wound up," she said, only it sounded more like a question.

Sakura waited.

Tomoyo-chan took a deep breath, and began to say something about being over-excited from the performance, and how Hiiragizawa-kun had been on a performance high, too, and Sakura was entirely unsurprised when she stopped, caught her breath on a half sob, and said, all at once, very fast, as if the words would make it real, "AndthenhesaidhelovedmeandI --" and started to cry.

Part of Sakura hated to see Tomoyo-chan like this. Tomoyo-chan was always so calm and gentle, unlike her. Sakura could never control her emotions, even if she tried, but Tomoyo-chan did it effortlessly. She got up and put her arm around Tomoyo-chan, who sobbed harder. Tomoyo-chan dragged her arm ruthlessly across her eyes, and hiccuped. "I don't know what got into me," she said, sounding almost normal. "I didn't sleep all night, I suppose -- and it was like he was trying to --" and down went her head again onto Sakura's shoulder. Sakura patted it and waited patiently. "-- and then I felt trapped," said Tomoyo-chan, muffledly. "So I ran. And I felt terrible about it, but I just wanted to get away."

Sakura thought about this for a moment. "Trapped?"

Tomoyo-chan lifted her head and snuffled. Sakura passed her a tissue from her pocket and Tomoyo blew her nose. "You know how it is when someone gives you a present that you don't really want, but it's too rude to refuse it?"

Sakura nodded. People were always giving her presents and letters of confession, which made her feel bad, especially when she had to give them back. It wasn't their fault that she loved Syaoran-kun.

Tomoyo-chan hiccuped again. "And it was like he was giving me himself. And wanted me in return. And I didn't want to belong to him, and I didn't want him to belong to me."

Sakura thought about this. She never really thought about people 'belonging' to others -- if she had thought about it at all, it was that some people belonged together, like Syaoran-kun and herself, or Oniichan and Yukito-san, and some people did not, like Oniichan and Akizuki-san. The way Tomoyo-chan was talking about it gave her a confused image of Eriol-kun wearing a collar and tag with 'If found, please return to Tomoyo Daidouji' on it. Then she got even more confused by an image of Kero and Yue wearing tags that said 'Property of Sakura Kinomoto', and gave up the line of thought in self-defense when she found herself trying to decide if Syaoran-kun would wear a pink or green collar, and whether she would have the same color or the opposite one.

"I don't think that Eriol-kun thinks like that," she said. "I think... I think that when Eriol-kun talks about belonging to someone, he means it like what Daddy said."

Tomoyo-chan stared at her.

"I think..." said Sakura, slowly. "That when Eriol-kun and Daddy think about belonging to someone, when they think about someone belonging to them, they don't think about possession, like a toy or a doll. I think they mean belonging together, being together, because they want to be with that person, and trusting them and talking to them about anything." She hesitated, trying to feel for the words. "Kero-chan said that Clow-san had a lot of problems, and then Eriol-kun said that his power was a burden. Sometimes... sometimes I wonder what really bothered them was that they couldn't share anything with anybody. I can talk to you, or Syaoran-kun, or Eriol-kun, but I don't think Eriol-kun or Clow-san had anybody they could talk to. Sometimes I wonder if Clow-san and Eriol-kun weren't really lonely."

Tomoyo-chan seemed to think about this, and her eyes looked as if they understood. But Tomoyo-chan always understood. Then she looked at Sakura suspiciously. "Whose side are you on?" she asked.

Sakura blinked at her. "Nobody's," she said, truthfully. "I just want both of you to be happy."

Tomoyo-chan's eyes narrowed.

"Maybe not _together_," Sakura added. "But you are awfully nice together." She hesitated again. "Tomoyo-chan," she said, taking her hands firmly in her own, "I don't want you to... to settle for watching someone else's happiness. I think... I think the person you love ... I think I would be even happier if I could see you being happy, too."

Tomoyo-chan's eyes looked into hers for a long moment. "You do know," she said, almost thoughtfully. "I wondered."

Sakura coughed apologetically. "I do feel kind of bad about it," she said, knowing Tomoyo-chan would know what she meant. "But..."

"Yes," said Tomoyo, smiling a little painfully, "'But.' It's always got a 'but' somewhere, hasn't it?"

"If I could, I would," said Sakura, helplessly.

Tomoyo-chan's mouth twisted up into a funny half-smile. "I know that, Sakura-chan. Believe me, I know it."

"I want you to be happy," said Sakura again, feeling like it was the only thing she knew how to say. "I want everything to be all right for you, too."

"It is--" began Tomoyo-chan, and Sakura took her shoulders and shook her gently, like she had shaken Eriol the night before.

"Not right now," she said, trying to express something she _felt_, but could not describe. "Don't -- don't think you have to give happiness to someone else, Tomoyo-chan. Take it."

Tomoyo-chan's eyes said she did not understand, but Sakura could not explain it to her. "Everything will be all right," she said, again, feeling more helpless than she ever had. She wanted Tomoyo-chan to be happy so very badly, and there was nothing she could do to help her. "No matter what happens."

There was a long silence, and then Tomoyo-chan managed a real smile. "Thank you, Sakura-chan."

"But you have to believe it," said Sakura, anxiously. This was important, too. "Promise me you'll believe it."

"I will," said Tomoyo-chan. "I promise."

\---

After Sakura-chan left, Tomoyo pulled the jacket out of her basket, and looked at it for a while. It was nearly done. She knew, even without seeing it on him, that it would fit Eriol perfectly. But she pushed that thought away and began to sew again, almost blindly.

Sakura-chan knew she loved her, and still accepted her.

Eriol knew she loved Sakura, and still loved her.

But that was less confusing than Sakura-chan accepting her love for her. She, after all, loved Sakura-chan despite the fact that Li-kun loved her, too. Li-kun had never apologized to her for being the one Sakura-chan loved, and she would have hated him if he did. Sakura-chan was sorry that she could not love Tomoyo back, but that was something that could not be helped.

Eriol knew all this. Eriol understood, perhaps.

Eriol would not apologize for what he felt for her. Perhaps he would apologize for the way he had said it, but Eriol would not insult her by making light of his own feelings. Just as she would not insult him, nor Sakura-chan, nor herself by making light of her own.

The problem was -- what did she feel?

The jacket was done, but for the trimmings and embroidery. She would do the dragon embroidery on the machine; unromantic, perhaps, but sensible and mindless. The tassel and frogs were easy, too, once one learned to do them.

She stared at the dragon taking shape under the sewing machine's flashing needle, but she didn't really see it.

When she looked up from sewing the last frog on with careful, precise stitches, the sun was at the edge of the sky. Summer meant that the sun set late, and Tomoyo was vaguely aware that she hadn't eaten all day. Probably that meant her stomach would object soon, but her brain was still ignoring the signals.

She shook out the jacket and stared at it. It was beautiful, she thought. It would suit Eriol, if she gave it to him.

She could give -- and her thoughts stopped.

That was it. That was the thing that had been at the edge of her mind, and now came quietly forward, as if it had simply been waiting for her to notice it.

It was not, she thought slowly, that her love for Sakura-chan was childish or immature, although she had outgrown her original feelings. And they had been replaced by something else, something brighter and deeper. There would always be a part of her that loved Sakura-chan the best in all the world. No, it was not that she cast aside that love to make way for a new.

It was like... it was more like living all one's life in a little room, and then one day opening some door and finding many more rooms to add on to the one you lived in.

Perhaps the reason why Eriol had frightened her so much was that he would not be content to be merely given to, that he must also give. Perhaps that was what frightened her, the thought of learning to accept being given to. She had always given, and never taken. Perhaps it was that she didn't know how to receive.

And being given to was so very uncertain. You could give and give and give, and still give more, and not worry about getting something back, because that was the point, to give everything you had of yourself. You couldn't say to someone, You must give me your love. It didn't work that way. But maybe... maybe for love to be complete it had to be accepted, too. Perhaps that was why her love for Sakura-chan had always seemed so complete, even though Sakura-chan did not love her back, because Sakura-chan was generous in accepting love.

She was hardly aware of the fact that she was on her feet and folding the completed jacket neatly into a bag. She was aware that she needed to talk to someone, and the only one she could think of was Eriol. And she was finally aware that she was calling him Eriol in her thoughts, as if she had a right to that intimacy.

The sun was just setting in a blaze of color as she walked up to his house. There was a song tickling at the edge of her mind -- although that was scarcely unusual. Tomoyo always had a song in her mind, waiting patiently to be sung. This one was unfamiliar to her, and hung on the edge of her mind, as if it wasn't yet the right moment for it to come out.

He was in the garden, of course, as she had half-expected, sitting in the grass, staring at jasmine climbing up a trellis. She went to him and sat down, as if they had arranged it before hand, or as if it were an old and familiar thing to do, as if this was not the first time she had sat beside him, but the thousandth.

"Have you come to give me my answer?" he said, still looking at the jasmine, how it exploded into white stars against its green leaves.

"Is it harder to accept than it is to give?" she asked. "Love, I mean."

Eriol thought about this for a second. "It shouldn't be. But it probably always will be."

Tomoyo was silent for another moment. Something about sitting with him in his garden, without the need to talk, without any need but to be together, steadied her and made her mind clear. "I made you something," she said. "Because... because I can't not give people things."

Eriol turned and looked at her, his eyes a little surprised, like that time long ago. She couldn't think of anything else to say, nothing pretty or graceful like she should be able to say at a time like this, so she just handed him the bag. He pulled it out slowly, as if it would fade into mist or smoke or a dream. He looked down at the jacket, and traced a slow finger over the dragon's face. "Thank you," he said, a little stiffly. "Er... Tomoyo? I can't read minds anymore."

And then Tomoyo started laughing so hard she fell over onto him, and his arm came up around her, as if he expected it to be thrown off again, and that only made her laugh harder, until he gave her a look that hovered between bemusement and hope. She recovered enough to put her arm around his neck, and said, "I think I love you, too, but I haven't had a lot of practice, you know."

He blinked at her, and then her words must have sunk in, because he started to smile, and then he started to chuckle, and then they both laughed so hard that they fell over and the jacket was crushed between them, even as Eriol's arms wrapped tightly around her, and hers around him.

And she could hear the song playing in her head, finally.

Nanka shiawase chotto shiawase  
Kanjiru toki koso ichiban no shiawase  
Nanka yukesou umaku yukesou  
Sou iu mon da ne ashita mo shiawase da ne

[I'm somehow happy, sort of happy  
It's the times you feel like that, that are the greatest happiness  
I'm somehow gonna go for it, it's gonna work out  
That's how it will be, so tomorrow I'll be happy again too]

\--30--

4:03 PM 6/24/01

 

\-- Couching is a stitch used to hold down thread on a fabric, generally to fill in a large area of fabric quickly. Yes, I know, but I've always been a bit of a needlework g33|< [blame my mother], and it seemed like something Tomoyo would think.

\-- Ojousama: Eh. Best way I can think of would be 'young lady', although that doesn't quite describe it, I think. 'Ojousan' is, if I remember correctly, the polite term for someone else's daughter, so it has the added meaning of 'Miss', as in a polite way to refer to a girl whose name you do not know. [Wossname in X calls Yuzariha 'ojouchan', which the American translators did as 'Missy', which is pretty accurate, I think. Sano in RK calls Kaoru 'jouchan', which, if I remember correctly, the fansubbers didn't even bother TRYING to translate, although I suppose 'chickie' would be pretty close. Dunno what the commercial release did.] Ojousama, when referring to The Young Lady of the House, always reminds me of the Indian servants calling Mary 'missie-sahib' in The Secret Garden, somehow.

If you think I exaggerated any of Tomoyo's thought processes while she was trying to decide what to do with the outfit, you are not a crafter. And you would be horrifically bored if by some fatal mischance you had to go to a craft, art, or fabric store with me. There is no such thing as too much yarn. There is no such thing as too many art supplies. Having piles of fabric is an end unto itself. And it is perfectly possible to rationalize not throwing out half-finished projects and scraps of useless but pretty fabric. Because. XO You MIGHT finish it someday and you spent so much TIME on the damn thing, and God only knows they commit DAYLIGHT ROBBERY with fabric prices these days...

Eh. Creative Liberties Were Taken with making the jacket. I wrote it and then realized that the jacket would probably have to be lined, etc, so just assume Tomoyo's 1337 sk1||0rZ with fabric were even greater than you thought. >_>

And the Sanrio character this time round was Landry [whom, incidentally, I adore].

Sakura is probably a little out of character, but she is sixteen years old, and naivety is not the same as stupidity, number one, and number two, even in the manga she can be scarily observant. Nobody told HER in volume six that Yue loved Clow, she figured it out all by her little self. Nor did Yukito say a word about liking Touya to her, she figured THAT out, too.


End file.
